Poet's Pub

by Eric Linklater

  “Do you think that such a world is the reasoned creation of a reasoning creator? That all the stench and cruelty and ugliness were inherent in the first casting of the rocks and the first dribble of fecund slime that fell on them? Do you think that these things are meant to endure? I say they’re not. I say the world is nothing but débris, planet-ash, swirling in space like a rotten boat in a whirlpool with wood-lice, rats, and an ultimately devouring sun as its companions.”

  “And what do you propose to do about it?” asked the professor.

  “Teach the truth,” said Neale. “Even you saw disintegration when my pictures showed it to you.”

  The rain beat on the windows and beyond them the tireless wind tore viciously at bending trees. The professor sighed and thought how foolish it was to ride out looking for adventure, and how unnecessary to meet an apostle of some combative and contrary creed.

  “There is beauty in the world,” he said.

  “Circe’s beauty,” answered Neale.

  “Courage.”

  “Which turns to cruelty.”

  “Hope—”

  “For children.”

  “Loyalty.”

  “Or stupidity.”

  “Virtue.”

  “Only in the starkest truth.”

  “Do you believe in nothing, then?”

  “In none of your toyshop idols.”

  “Then what do you believe in?”

  “Negation and absurdity. Or, if you prefer a triune godhead. Buddhism, Birth Control, and Bathos.”

  “Ah!” said Holly. “Birth control!”

  “Have you got anything to say against it?”

  “I’ve got a whole lot of things to say against it. Just you listen to me. I don’t know how many brothers and sisters you’ve got, but I had ten. Seven sisters and three brothers, and all of ’em older than me. Now what do you think would have happened if my old dad and my old mother had been birth controllers? Well, it’s long odds that I wouldn’t be here for one. And Nelly and Tom and Gladys and Marigold and Dick and Lottie and Lily—they were twins—mightn’t have come either, so who would Henry and Mabel and Poppy have had to play with, without going on to the street and mixing with all sorts and kinds and conditions that you didn’t know what they had in their hair? No one of us ever had ringworm or anything dirty like that, and I say that Nelly and Tom and Gladys—eight of us, at any rate—are eight good arguments against birth control.”

  “And what have you done to justify your mother’s pains or to make you glad that you survived vaccination?”

  “I’ve been bayoneted by a Prussian Guard and I’ve invented a blue cocktail,” said Holly proudly.

  “You have contributed to war and intoxication. A notable record. If you are married to a good woman your idiot’s tale is complete.”

  “Is there anything wrong with your kidneys?” asked the professor.

  “I have never been ill in my life,” said Neale coldly. “Why do you ask?”

  “I wondered,” said the professor, “for I sympathize with your feelings but I can’t accept your conclusions, and I thought nephritis might be the key to your philosophy.”

  A flush had slowly crept over Holly’s face, occasioned not by Professor Benbow’s indelicacy but by Neale’s tripartite insult, the significance of which he had been slow to realize. He rose from his chair and stood in front of the painter.

  “I’m not married, neither to a good woman nor to a bad one,” he said bravely, “but I would have been if she hadn’t preferred my Uncle Harry, he being younger than me, owing to our having a large family, and also more handsome in appearance. Now just you shut up! I’ve listened to you long enough and I don’t like your voice.”

  Holly began hurriedly to take off his coat and waistcoat, and the landlord as hurriedly tried to prevent him, thinking that Holly was inciting either himself or Neale to physical combat.

  “You go and sit down!” said Holly fiercely. “Go on now! And think of some other long words to gargle with.”

  He turned to Neale, who was looking bored.

  “I’m going to show you something,” he said. “You didn’t believe me when I told you about the Prussian Guard, did you? They never do. Not even the newspapers didn’t—they said it was Saxons—and they even believe in what’s going to win the Derby. But what d’you think this is—eh?”

  He pulled his shirt—it had pink stripes—out of his trousers and held it high in front of his face.

  His voice came muffled from behind the curtain: “Look at that and then sneer if you like!”

  Neale saw a long white scar running prettily over Holly’s ribs—thin ribs that curved tightly upon a narrow chest—and up towards his left armpit.

  “There are thousands of branded cattle in the world,” he said. “Personally I would prefer a Tyburn T on my thumb.”

  “Now do sit down,” said the landlord as Holly stuttered with rage. “The conversation was just growing interesting, I thought, when you interrupted it by getting incestuous all of a sudden.”

  “Incestuous yourself, you cock-eyed old poodle!” shouted the wrathful Holly, his shirt hanging down in front something like a sporran. The professor smiled pleasantly at the animated scene while Neale looked scornful and remote.

  Then, before the landlord could reply, the door opened and a husky voice said, “’Oo’s is that there motor-car standing outside of ’ere?”

  The newcomer was a policeman, solemn, fat-cheeked, wrapt in a rain-streaming cape.

  “It’s mine,” said Holly.

  With a sombre eye the policeman considered his improper appearance. Then he turned to the landlord.

  “Is this an orggy, Mr. Postlethwaite?” he asked.

  “He was only showing us his wound,” explained the landlord.

  “Then let me see it too,” said the policeman.

  “What for?” asked Holly.

  “Evidence,” said the policeman.

  Once more Holly pulled up his shirt while the constable examined his scar with interest.

  “My wife’s youngest brother’s got a better one than that,” he commented; and before Holly could retort added, “Now show me your licence.”

  Helplessly submitting to both the insult and exaction of authority Holly picked up his coat and took from a pocket-book his driver’s licence. As the constable opened it a four-times folded piece of paper fell to the floor.

  Holly dropped on his knees with instant knowledge in his heart and an imperative desire to read again those few lines, the half-dozen figures, that he had thought stolen and far away. He smoothed out the paper on the carpet and visibly adored, while the rain-spilling policeman and the little fat white landlord marvelled. He looked up, and with an eye moist and lambent caught the professor’s curious eye.

  “The recipe,” he added huskily. “I’ve found it, sir. It’s never been stolen at all. I’ve had it in my pocket all the time.”

  “So this has been a fool’s errand from the beginning,” said the professor.

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “You’re like many men, Holly, who leave home only to find what they already possess.”

  Neale laughed harshly.

  “I expect Miss Benbow’s been just as safe as my recipe,” said Holly.

  “I hope so. Probably she has been. Keith followed them very quickly. I suppose I could have trusted him.”

  The landlord and the policeman listened intently but without understanding; like performing seals.

  “Do you want to look at the rest of my pictures?” asked Neale.

  “I am eager to see everything,” said the professor, “so long as you do not ask me to believe in all I see.”

  “Then here is an imaginative landscape, a mere in starlight. I shall print under it these lines of Yeats:

  ‘I would find by the edge of that water

  The collar-bone of a hare,

  Worn thin by the lapping of the water,

  And pierce it through with a gimlet, and stare


  At the old bitter world where they marry in

  churches,

  And laugh over the untroubled water

  At all who marry in churches,

  Through the white thin bone of a hare.’”

  “Good God,” said the professor, “what merriment is in the world! Mr. Neale, I shall soon be an old man if I am not one already. Already I am inclined to reminiscence and my mind is no better than a rocking-horse that swings back and fore with only the illusion of progress. And yet my heart beats quicker as it rocks, and stronger rhythms than yours arise in my brain, and my memory, queasy and senescent as it undoubtedly is, recalls more cheerful things than you look forward to. Now, for instance, these lines come into my mind:

  ‘When drop-of-blood-and-foam-dapple

  Bloom lights the orchard apple,

  And thicket and thorp are merry

  With silver-surfèd cherry,

  And azuring-over graybell makes

  Wood banks and brakes wash wet like lakes,

  And magic cuckoo-call

  Caps, clears, and clinches all.…’

  “And this verse too, which is apposite to the occasion:

  ‘I’ll not be a fool like the nightingale

  That sits up till midnight without any ale,

  Making a noise with his nose.’”

  “I don’t drink,” said Neale.

  “I accept your apology,” replied the professor.

  The policeman wiped his moustache with the back of his hand. It was a proleptic gesture.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  The storm grew gentler going south—as many things do—and poured upon Downish without malice, so that on Monday morning the High Street was like a liner whose decks have been newly washed; not, as might be feared, a dismal thoroughfare choked with fallen branches and ravished tiles, hens drowned, dead dogs, and all the other wrack that tempest commonly leaves behind it. The gutters were full, but the water in them made a pleasant brook-like noise. On the house-tops damp sparrows sat and roofs were shining wet, but already the sun was shining, primrose-pale and watery, and the sparrows perked their invincible heads.

  The wheels of John Jellicoe Judd’s bicycle made a sibilant, slurring noise on the drenched road, but his whistle rose shrilly and he slung a bundle of newspapers into “The Pelican” with the animation that older people reserve for rare and important occasions.

  George the Boots was waiting for it, and behind George waited Maria and Bill and Herbert, while O’Higgins and Veronica were not far away. George looked important, Bill sceptical, Herbert gaped and gulped like a young starling waiting for worms, and Maria in expectation of tragedy was ready with tears to shed. O’Higgins and Veronica were discussing mutual acquaintances.

  “She may ’ave been boss-eyed,” said O’Higgins, “but ’e was no gentleman to go and marry ’er sister after what ’e’d led ’er to expect.”

  “You’re that stern, Mr. O’Higgins,” exclaimed Veronica blissfully.

  And yet in spite of their apparent pre-occupation Veronica and O’Higgins shared equally the excited expectancy of Bill and Maria and Herbert and George. It was that excitement which had sharpened their sensibility and made it remember the Dido’s fate of a cross-eyed girl. Since the previous afternoon the kitchen of “The Pelican” had been like a cave of the winds with blowing rumour and counter-rumour, theory and explanation, and cross-currents of doubt and perplexity. Saturday Keith and his friend Mr. Cotton had vanished in a blue charabanc. Joan Benbow had vanished; abducted, it was said. Nelly Bly who had always been half a mystery, had vanished, none of them knew how. Holly had gone. Lady Mercy and Mr. Wesson and Mr. van Buren had gone. Things had been stolen. Strange disorder had been discovered in Mr. Wesson’s room. Documents had disappeared. Scotland Yard had been notified. All the remaining visitors, in a state of barely-suppressed excitement themselves, had been conscientiously calm before servants and so made the servants doubly sure that calamity of some kind had occurred. And nobody could suggest a theory that took account of all the circumstances they severally knew.

  But the newspapers would tell them. It was sure to be in the papers. They were argus-eyed, sensitive to news as a microphone to the rustle of paper, omniscient and omni-explanatory. And with Lady Mercy and Saturday Keith, kidnapping, stolen documents, and a pirated charabanc to dazzle their eyes, delight their ears, and occupy their brains, why, the newspapers would be full of the story. And so George and Maria and all the rest of them would find out— when the newspapers came—what had really been happening at “The Pelican.”

  Like rugby forwards, then, lined up for a throw-in, they waited for the bundle which John Jellicoe Judd would bring. And when it came they pressed forward eagerly.

  “Never mind The Times and the Telegraph,” said O’Higgins. “You’ve got to set a compass-course to find your way through them. Look for the Daily Day.”

  George, cutting the string which held the papers together, snorted and said sarcastically. “I thought you might like to read about it in ’Ansard first.”

  “What’s ’Ansard?” asked Veronica.

  “Parliament’s Comic Cuts,” said Bill. “’Ere, give me one too.”

  The Daily Days were handed round and for once nobody looked at the racing news. With the certainty that headlines awaited them they turned immediately to the centre page. Nor were they disappointed. For Lady Mercy had visited the office of the Daily Day as well as Scotland Yard, and Lady Mercy herself was news. “The Pelican” was Lady Mercy’s pub, and Lady Mercy was Cotton’s Beer, and Cotton’s Beer (as the starry sky-signs said) was Britain’s Beer. So across the principal news page of the Daily Day a full length streamer ran:

  INN OUTRAGE:

  CHARABANC COMMANDEERED TO CHASE CRIMINALS

  A bright area at the top of the two left-hand columns was strikingly cross-cut with a succession of pneumo-privative headlines, and a brief précis of the story followed in a distinguished font. In this manner:

  POET’S PUB PILLAGED

  ABDUCTION OF PROFESSOR’S DAUGHTER

  PRETTY CHAMBERMAID

  PRECEDES POET

  IN PURSUIT

  LADY MERCY COTTON’S NARRATIVE

  “An extraordinary outrage took place yesterday afternoon at Downish. ‘The Pelican Inn,’ which has become famous under the management of Mr. Saturday Keith, the old Oxford Rowing Blue and a poet of national repute, had its Sunday peace disturbed by the abduction in broad daylight of Miss Joan Benbow, who was there on holiday with her father. The kidnapper, who had also been staying at ‘The Pelican,’ is possibly a member of an international gang of criminals. His plunder included the manuscript of Mr. Keith’s latest volume of poetry and a secret process for the development of the petroleum industry. A personal account of the outrage by Lady Mercy Cotton, the owner of ‘The Pelican Inn,’ who was an eyewitness, is exclusive to the Daily Day.”

  “Well, this beats Barnum!” exclaimed O’Higgins with a rich and juicy satisfaction.

  “Just about what I’d been expecting,” said George in a gratified voice.

  “They ’aven’t found the bodies yet,” said Maria.

  “Bodies!” protested Herbert and Veronica.

  “There’s always bodies,” said Maria.

  “Oh, shut up!” Bill complained. “Can’t you enjoy yourselves quietly?”

  The story, confined by now to column breadth, reopened as follows:

  “As if a bomb bursting, the old-world peace of Downish was ruthlessly destroyed yesterday afternoon by the discovery of a plot which involved the manuscript of an unpublished poem, documents relating to a new process for refining petroleum, and the person of Miss Joan Benbow, a daughter of the well-known author, scholar and critic, Professor William Benbow.”

  It continued in a vivid and arresting style to relate the succession of events so far as they were known; to emphasize the sinister aspects of Mr. Wesson—a book-collector of mysterious origin, an American and so probably a millionaire, a Croesus of the u
nderworld, perhaps?—and to revel in the immediate pursuit of the kidnapper by the commandeered “Blue Bird.” “Elizabethan Tactics” was what a subheading called the manuvre which had so offended Miss Horsfall-Hughes and her fellow Giggleswaders.

  Nelly Bly’s part in the affair was mentioned admiringly but briefly, for Lady Mercy had no personal acquaintance with Nelly and she was somewhat concerned for the safety of her Isotta-Frascini. Nor was the Daily Day in the secret of Helen Blythesdale’s alias—the editor of the Women’s Page being out of town for the week-end—and that revelation, which subsequently added greatly to the reputation of the Day, was necessarily reserved for a later instalment.

  Lady Mercy’s narrative followed in the adjacent column. The story as already related was, of course, based on the information which she had supplied, but to be able to report her own words, garnished with the personal authority of inverted commas, was a tribute to the importance of the Day. And whereas the left-hand column was conscious art, the right-hand one was simple word-of-mouth narration of personally observed incidents. It was a human document. And the readers of the Daily Day thought well of human documents.

  “The first indication that anything out of the ordinary had happened,” said Lady Mercy, “was when Mr. Keith told me that the manuscript of ‘Tellus Will Proceed,’ his new poem, had disappeared. It was the only copy in existence, for he had destroyed the earlier drafts, and naturally he was perturbed.”

  Lady Mercy conveyed the impression that the loss of Saturday’s poem was a more serious matter than the theft of van Buren’s papers. This was in accordance with van Buren’s own wishes, for the time was not yet ripe to advertise his invention with any detail. Lady Mercy knew the advantages of publicity. She had realized immediately that if Saturday’s fame as a poet grew, the reputation of her favourite pub would grow with it. Most poets were pleased enough if anybody borrowed their books, and here she had in her own service a poet who could actually get his work stolen. It was a superb mishap.

  And so while expressing genuine anxiety for the fate of Joan Benbow she contrived to throw into higher relief Saturday’s praiseworthy decision in immediately commandeering the “Blue Bird” for rescue work.