Hamlet Revenge!

by Michael Innes

  ‘Didn’t she run old Dillon?’

  ‘I think she did – as a clever woman can run a genius. She kept him to the portraits, picked the right moment for capitulating to the Academy, and so on.’ Lord Auldearn paused. ‘I know my part, I think. What’s yours?’

  ‘I’m producing. And I’ve built a sort of Elizabethan stage.’

  ‘Good Lord! Where?’

  ‘In the Banqueting Hall.’

  ‘Mouldy, gouty hole. So it’s all very serious – striking experiment in the staging of Shakespeare – crowds of your professional brethren watching, eh?’

  ‘There is a bevy of them coming down on the night. And an American about the place already, I believe. The Duchess is never wholly serious – but she’s working tremendously hard.’

  ‘Anne always did. Worked underground for weeks to contrive a minute’s perfect effect – a minute’s perfect absurdity, it might be. That’s how she got here. What’s she doing – the dresses?’

  ‘Not a bit of it. She’s been reading up the texts. Got out the Horton Second Quarto and borrowed somebody’s First Folio. I’m terrified she’ll start scribbling enthusiastically in the margins. And she’s been studying the acting tradition as well. She’s impressed by the accounts of Garrick, particularly his business when he first sees the Ghost. She’s almost ready to coach Melville Clay in it.’

  ‘Coach Clay!’ Lord Auldearn chuckled. ‘Do him good. Make a noisy success of a part in London and New York – and then be coached in it by a woman for private theatricals. What’s he doing it for?’

  The question, abruptly pitched, seemed to make Gott reflect. ‘Glamour of Scamnum,’ he suggested at length.

  ‘Humph!’ said the Lord Chancellor – and a moment later added: ‘And Elizabeth – how does she like it? Rather a thrill playing opposite Clay?’

  ‘No doubt,’ said Gott.

  For a moment there was silence as the car sped up the drive. Macdonald, stumping past, touched his hat respectfully.

  ‘And Teddy?’ Lord Auldearn continued his inquisition. ‘What does Teddy think of the size the thing’s apparently grown to?’

  Gott looked dubious. ‘I can’t quite make out what the Duke thinks – on that or anything. I’m a distant Dillon, you know, and the Duchess strikes me as essentially readable. But the Duke puzzles me. I shouldn’t like to have to put him in a novel – or not in the foreground. He’s a nice conventional effect while in the middle-distance, but disturbing on scrutiny.’

  Lord Auldearn paid these remarks the tribute of some moments’ silence. Then he pitched another question: ‘Do you write novels?’

  Confound you, thought Gott, for the smartest lawyer in England – and replied with polite finality: ‘Pseudonymously.’

  But the Lord Chancellor, vaguely curious, was not to be put off. ‘Under what name?’ he said.

  Gott told him.

  ‘Bless my soul – mystery stories! Well, I suppose it goes along with your ferreting sort of work – just as it might with mine. And what are you writing now? Going to make a story out of the Scamnum theatricals?’

  ‘Hardly a mystery story, I should think,’ replied Gott. Lord Auldearn, he reflected, was not impertinent – merely old and easy. But Gott was shy of any mention of this hobby of his. And it was perhaps with some obscure motive of diversion that his hand at this moment went out to a crumpled ball of paper which he had discerned in a corner of the car.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Lord Auldearn.

  Gott smoothed out the paper – to stare unbelievingly at three lines of typescript on an otherwise blank quarto page. ‘More Shakespeare,’ he said, ‘like our greetings a few minutes ago. But this isn’t Richard II; it’s Macbeth.’

  Lord Auldearn was again vaguely curious. ‘Read it out,’ he said. And Gott read:

  ‘The raven himself is hoarser

  That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan

  Under my battlements.’

  The Rolls had stopped – Scamnum towering above it. ‘Curious,’ said Lord Auldearn.

  It was half past seven. Noel Gylby sat on the west terrace, dividing his attention between a cocktail, Handley Cross, and his former tutor, who had sat down with a brief ‘Hullo, Noel,’ to stare absently and a shade disapprovingly at the beginnings of a garish sunset.

  ‘There’s going to be a decent party at Kincrae for the Twelfth,’ said Mr Gylby presently. ‘Last August Aunt Anne took the bit between her teeth and the moors were like an OTC field-day. But Uncle Teddy’s put his foot down this time.’

  ‘Has he,’ said Gott.

  ‘He’s asking you,’ said Noel, turning Handley Cross sideways to look at an illustration. ‘Going?’

  Gott shook his head. ‘I think I may be in Heidelberg,’ he said austerely.

  ‘Humph.’ Noel had been an impressed observer of the Lord Chancellor’s mannerisms during tea. And after a silence he added ‘I’m getting a new 12-bore.’

  In the technical language of his generation Noel was an ‘aesthete’. His normal conversation was much of his contemporaries the youngest poets. He ran a magazine for them and wrote editorials sagely discussing André Breton and Marianne Moore; it was rumoured that he had been to a tea-party with Mr Ezra Pound. But in the atmosphere of Scamnum some atavistic process asserted itself; he took on the colour of the place – or what a lively imagination prompted him to feel the colour should be. He read Surtees and Beckford; he made notes on Colonel Farquharson on the Horse. He discoursed on stable management with the head groom; he spent hours confabulating with the one-eyed man in the gunroom.

  ‘A half-choke, I think,’ said Noel – and the subject failing to excite he added after a moment: ‘Why didn’t you take a cocktail?’

  ‘Habit,’ replied Gott. ‘The old gentlemen at St Anthony’s don’t drink cocktails before dinner, and I’ve got the habit.’ He smiled ironically at his former pupil. ‘I’m at the age when habit gets its hold, Noel.’

  Noel looked at him seriously. ‘I suppose you are getting on,’ he said. ‘What are you?’

  ‘Thirty-four.’

  ‘I say!’ exclaimed Noel. ‘You’ll soon be forty.’

  ‘Quite soon,’ responded Gott coldly.

  ‘You know,’ said Noel, ‘I think you should–’

  He was interrupted by the appearance of a dinner-jacketed figure at the end of the terrace. ‘Here’s your pal Bunney. I’ll leave the savants together. Little chat about Shakespeare’s semicolons may do you good.’

  ‘My pal who?’

  ‘Bunney. Dr Bunney of Oswego, USA. Dying to meet a real live Fellow of the British Academy. I suppose’ – Noel added innocently – ‘it’s something to make that even at thirty-four? Well, cheery-bye, papa Gott.’ And Mr Gylby strolled off.

  Gott eyed the advancing figure of Dr Bunney with suspicion. The man was carrying a largish black box which he set down on a table as he advanced to shake hands.

  ‘Dr Gott? Pleased to meet you. My name’s Bunney – Bunney of Oswego. We are fellow-workers in a great field. Floreat scientia.’

  ‘How do you do. Quite so,’ said Gott – and assumed that charming, charmed, and tentatively understanding expression which is the Englishman’s defence on such occasions. ‘You have come down for the play?’

  ‘For the phonology of the play,’ corrected Dr Bunney. He turned and flicked a switch on the black box. ‘Say “bunchy cushiony bush”,’ said Dr Bunney placidly.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘No. “Bunchy cushiony bush”.’

  ‘Oh! Bunchy cushiony bush.’

  ‘And now. “The unimaginable touch of time”.’

  ‘The unimaginable touch of time,’ said Gott, with the suppressed indignation of a good Wordsworthian forced to blaspheme.

  ‘Thank you.’ Bunney turned and flicked another swi
tch. Instantly the black box broke into speech. “Say bunchy cushiony bush I beg your pardon no bunchy cushiony bush oh bunchy cushiony bush and now the unimaginable touch of time the unimaginable touch of time thank you,’ said the black box grotesquely.

  Bunney beamed. ‘The Bunney high-fidelity dictaphone. Later, of course’ – he added explanatorily – ‘it is all graphed.’

  ‘Graphed – of course.’

  ‘Graphed and analysed. Dr Gott, my thanks for one more instance of that friendly co-operation without which learning cannot increase. Hee paideia kai tees sophias kai tees aretees meeteer. There are drinks?’

  ‘Sherry and cocktails are in the library.’ And as Dr Bunney disappeared Gott chanted a little Greek of his own.

  ‘Brek-ek-ek-ex! Ko-ax! Ko-ax!’ said Gott. ‘Brek-ek-ek-ex! Ko-ax!’

  ‘Giles, have you laid an egg – or what?’ The Lady Elizabeth Crispin had emerged on the terrace, bearing a luridly tinged cherry speared on a cocktail stick.

  ‘I was only telling a rabbit what the frogs thought of him,’ said Gott obscurely – and began laboriously an unhappy academic explanation. ‘Aristophanes–’

  ‘Aristophanes! Isn’t Shakespeare quite enough at present?’

  ‘I think he is. Shakespeare and Bunney between them.’

  ‘It was Bunney, was it? Has he black-boxed you?’

  ‘Yes. Bunchy cushiony Bunney. How did he get here?’

  ‘Mother picked him up at a party. He black-boxed her and she was thrilled. He’s going to black-box the whole play and lecture on the vowels and consonants and phoneems and things when he gets home. Only mother hopes he’s really something sinister.’

  ‘Sinister?’

  ‘The Spy in Black or something. Black-boxing secrets of state. Have my cherry, Giles.’

  Gott munched the cherry. The Lady Elizabeth perched on the broad stone balustrade. ‘Another hideous sunset,’ she said.

  ‘Isn’t it!’ exclaimed Gott, electrified at this agreement. But Elizabeth had returned to the subject of the American.

  ‘I suppose Bunney’s quoted Greek and Latin and the Advancement of Learning at you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’ve been eyeing him with the polite wonder of the St Anthony’s man?’

  ‘Yes – I mean, certainly not.’

  ‘Dear Giles, this must be an awful bore for you – beaning Shakespeare to make a barbarian holiday. You’re very nice about it all.’

  ‘It’s not beaning. Everybody’s being remarkably serious. And I want to see Melville Clay on something like an Elizabethan stage. And I particularly want to see you.’

  Elizabeth wriggled gracefully into a position in which she could inspect her golden slippers. ‘I wish about three hundred other people weren’t going to. How morbidly Edwardian-Clever Mother is! Don’t you think?’

  ‘Age cannot wither her,’ said Gott.

  ‘Yes, I know. She’s marvellous. But who but an Edwardian Clever would think of celebrating a daughter’s twenty-first by dressing her in white satin to be talked bawdy to by a matinee-idol and drowned and buried to make a big county and brainy Do?’

  This breathless speech had evidently been simmering. Gott looked surprised. ‘You don’t really object, do you, Elizabeth?’

  Elizabeth swung off the balustrade. ‘Not a bit. I think I love it. Clay’s beautiful.’

  ‘And extraordinarily nice.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Elizabeth. ‘And – Giles – I do hope I’ll speak it all so that you approve!’

  ‘Ironical wench.’ Gott was out of his chair. ‘Round the lily pond before dinner, Elizabeth!’ And they ran down the broad steps together.

  Returning, they met Noel waving a letter.

  ‘I say – Giles, Elizabeth! The Black Hand!’

  Elizabeth stared. ‘Do you mean the black box, child?’

  ‘Not a bit of it. The Black Hand. Something in Uncle Gott’s own lurid line. Preparing to strike – and all that.’

  Gott understood. ‘You’ve had a scrap of typescript?’

  Noel withdrew a quarto sheet of paper from the envelope and handed it to Elizabeth. All three stared at it.

  And in their ears tell them my dreadful name,

  Revenge, which makes the foul offender quake.

  ‘From Titus Andronicus,’ said Gott.

  ‘Rubbishing sort of joke,’ said Noel.

  Far away, St James’ Park was closing. The melancholy call, as of the archangel crying banishment from Eden, floated faintly through the open window. The Parliamentary Private Secretary, glancing obliquely out across the parade, could catch a glimpse of his old berth. He and Sir James were well past that stile together…but this was a nervous elevation. His fingers drummed on the window-sill.

  ‘Here in a few minutes now,’ said the Permanent Secretary unemotionally.

  ‘In a Bag?’

  ‘Hilfers is bringing it back… Croydon.’

  ‘Oh’. The Parliamentary Secretary was frankly raw, frankly impressed. There was silence, broken at last by footsteps in the long corridor. An elderly resident clerk came in.

  ‘Captain Hilfers here, sir.’

  ‘We’ll go over to the deciphering,’ said the Permanent Secretary briskly to the Parliamentary Secretary. He picked up a telephone. ‘And have the great men over from their dinner.’

  At this the Parliamentary Secretary grew suddenly cheerful. ‘Of course they must come over straight away,’ he agreed importantly.

  The Prime Minister summed up the deliberations of an hour.

  ‘Get Auldearn,’ said the Prime Minister.

  ‘Auldearn’s at Scamnum,’ said the Parliamentary Secretary.

  ‘Get What’s-his-name,’ said the Prime Minister.

  ‘Get Captain Hilfers,’ elucidated the Permanent Secretary into a telephone.

  The near-midsummer dusk is deepening on Horton Hill. The sheep are shadowy on its slopes; to the north the softly rolling downland is sharpening into silhouette; and below, Scamnum is grown mysterious. Its hundred points of light are a great city from the air. Or its vague pale bulk is the sprawl of all Europe as viewed from an unearthly height at the opening of The Dynasts. And here, as there, are spirits. The spirits sinister and ironic look down on Scamnum Court these nights.

  2

  There had been a time when Anne Dillon’s large canvases were notorious. Lionel Dillon, moving dubiously amid the gay, indistinguished, and overflowing companies which his daughter gathered in their rambling Hampstead house, had been inclined to charge her with a merely quantitative mind. Dillon himself was austerely qualitative in those days. He would stand grim and baffled before a single canvas for a year on end, and count every moment not so spent lost – fit only for drink and violence, to be followed by confession, Mass, and renewed concentration afterwards. He was of the time before the nineties. ‘One should do nothing to make oneself conspicuous,’ was the motto of his quiet spells; and he painted in a dress indistinguishable from that of his father, the Dublin solicitor.

  Anne, taking charge of the widower in her later teens, had had to change all that. It was in itself, she knew, not a good picture to present to the declining century; and it was otherwise dangerous. Brandy once a month was the fatal Cleopatra of that generation; she ruled it out and established instead more intimate and respectable relations with claret. ‘Dillon,’ she would say – for she exploited all the minutiae of the cult of genius – ‘Dillon was born a glass too low’; and the daily glass, working out in practice at three-quarters of a bottle, was provided. There was nothing merely quantitative about the claret; it was the best one could readily buy in London, and it came into the cellars regularly twice a year even if the rent or Anne’s dressmaker had to wait. And it worked. The awkward thought disappeared from the canvas to be replaced by the fluent handwriting that
was acclaimed miraculous in London, in Glasgow, in Paris. And although Lionel Dillon knew the early studies as the things for which men would one day bid high he did not protest. It was not altogether Anne’s doing: he had felt the twitch of his tether, knew both the level at which he had shot his bolt and the level at which he had a future. And the orthodoxy that had come upon him like a revelation in Toledo was still heterodox enough in England – heterodox enough for the picture Anne was composing.

  The period of the big parties had been the critical time. Making scores of undistinguished Bohemian people interesting to each other, imbuing them with poise, confidence, and urbanity for a night, had been stiff labour; and even on unauthentic champagne-cup and mixed biscuits it had come expensive. But again it worked. A mere law of averages mingled in those promiscuous gatherings certain of the emerging Great. Selection came later.

  Perhaps the turning-point had been the famous Academy Banquet. It might have gone like a damp squib, been written a tasteless fiasco: the paper probabilities were strongly that way. But Anne had brought it off. There had been hard work behind the perfection with which the dozen chosen young men had impersonated the venerable President of an august English institution – twelve snowy beards, twelve courtly stoops. And Anne kept her head. She vetoed out of hand the exuberant suggestion that the real President should be lured unawares to the party; she firmly locked up in a lavatory a young actress who came brilliantly disguised as the President’s undistinguished wife. Dillon and his bosom friend Max Cope, each in his own bravura manner, dashed off for the occasion a couple of travesties of the most discussed ‘pictures of the year’. And a powerful London dealer, catching with the prescience of his kind a something in the air, bought these broad jokes on the spot at prices far exceeding what was being asked for the originals at Burlington House. The whole affair was kept beautifully dark – something half London had in confidence – and it marked alike the height and end of the Hampstead period. The play-acting period, Dillon called it.