by Paul Ableman
“She’s moved into my mind too.”
“Really, Witt?”
“She’s having a row there with my wife. I’ve got a wife back in London, in Cob Lane where our little house is either that or a vast new housing estate. I’ve got a fine range of children back there too.”
“Witt, what about this novel of yours?”
“What about it?”
“Isn’t it going to damage the thing if the hero and author are rivals for the same girl?”
“It may damage it horribly. But that always happens. It never goes smoothly.”
“God, I’d hate to ruin that book.”
“Incidently, you have grasped that there are going to be two other heroes as well, haven’t you?”
“You said something about it in your letter—which, I must confess, I felt was a trifle pedantic—but just what’s the joke?”
“It’s not a joke. It’s just that—well, I’m trying something new, just as you do when you vaccinate a shark. You may wind up with an immune shark or you may get your nose bitten off.”
“Who are the others?”
“There’s a peasant, half-Irish and half-Burmese, who lives in Connemara and cultivates paddy—”
“There’s no paddy in Connemara.”
“This is a novel, Pidge.”
“But—well, who is the other?”
“A man called Glebe who lives in Bangor. He has a hitch-hiking son and an earth-borer.”
“What’s that?”
“I haven’t seen it yet.”
“And you seriously think you can combine all these clashing elements into a successful work?”
“I think it may well prove to be utterly impossible. But it’s a challenge which excites me.”
“Well,” sighed Pidge, his fingers lightly testing the secure closure of an element of his apparel. “I’ll go along with you, Witt, but it’s not science, I can tell you that.”
We returned to Sonya. Pidge seemed temporarily to have forgotten his infatuation. He absently sipped a liqueur and gazed out at seven young conspirators setting fire to a steeple across the road.
I paid the bill. Pidge invited us to return with him to his flat where he and I could continue discussing our prospective collaboration and Sonya could get drunk. In fact, when we got there, Sonya barely touched a drop of Pidge’s excellent armagnac but stood attentively at the window watching a steeple burn. From time to time she interrupted our discussion to comment on what was taking place. She said once: “There is a burning that I can see,” and another time: “Someone has set up many flames in this town.”
“Quiet, Sonya,” snapped Pidge irritably.
“There is definitely fire.”
“Don’t fuss, girl. It’s only arson.”
On Pidge’s mantelpiece was an ivory model of a boxing ring with two magnetic boxers inside it. When she wearied of the fire, Sonya played with this elegant toy, causing one magnetic boxer repeatedly to fell the other. But after a while, she admitted:
“I have small taste for English sport.”
And she returned to the window. I now asked Pidge why he had suggested that he should figure in the prospective novel as a lecturer in Literary Agronomy at an American rural college and he explained that he considered the theme rich in dramatic possibility.
“There is also,” he elaborated, “the cultural aspect—most rural communities are lacking in this and we could provide it. As regards adventure, I might save the town from a blight caused by some diabolical virus (there are plenty to choose from) which is threatening the bean crop—”
“How do you visualize yourself in this book?”
“Much as I am: cool, efficient, and with a trained scientific intellect.”
“Romantic interest?”
“We should have girls for that. I could train one of them to combat the blight. She could be the daughter of an émigré aristocrat who learns to repudiate a load of musty old values in order to dedicate herself to science. We could spray the beans together, from an aeroplane.”
“What would you spray them with?”
“That could be the suspense angle. We would have to spend days and nights in the lab testing thousands of different compounds. During this spell of enforced intimacy, the countess—she could be a countess—and I become very close, almost without realizing it. The breathtaking climax is when the townsfolk, their patience understandably frayed to breaking point by the threat to their beans, get up a lynching party, and the angry hum of its approach interrupts our first, almost casual embrace. I glance up with a puzzled frown and then cry: ‘Behold! Look there!’ The duchess follows my glance and her eyes widen in amazed thanksgiving as she sees a Petri dish full of withered blight into which, the day before, I had accidentally dropped some local homebrew which proves to be death to the blight. The crop is saved!”
“You mean you then go and spray homebrew on the local beans?”
“Exactly! From an aeroplane! And the blight peels off them like paint from an old door. There’s naturally tremendous rejoicing.”
“And that’s the end of the novel?”
“Not necessarily. After that we could have various other adventures—the princess and I, you understand—and by the end of the book I could be well on the way to being president.”
“Of the United States?”
“No—at least, what I had in mind was president of the college—but you’re the author, Witt.”
I nodded thoughtfully. It was pleasant in Pidge’s flat. There was an atmosphere of tasteful comfort, as exemplified by the magnetic boxing ring, a small trapeze dangling from the ceiling and supporting a replica of an inebriated student, caricatures of more students, all hideous and many inebriated, squatting on the mantelpiece and a large whitecoated model of a scientist tendering—the symbolism was obvious—a soft cushion for mankind’s weary backside. I tried to dismiss from my mind the notion that Pidge’s outline was drivel and, in order to generate sympathy for him, I imagined that some publisher was scheming to convert his flat into a block of offices. I now remembered the fire and asked Sonya how it was going.
“The fire?” she asked dreamily. “It has emigrated to where I belong, to Sardinia.”
“You’re Sardinian!” cried Pidge. “I suspected it! Kindly undress now, Sonya.”
“I will undress,” promised Sonya, “but not here, not in Sardinia.”
“God, Witt!” sighed Pidge. “She thinks this is Sardinia. What’ll we do?”
“Boys!” cried Sonya gleefully. “I am not Sardinian. It was just something I said. You see what this means?”
“What?” asked Pidge.
“No one knows me here.”
Pidge frowned and made an impatient gesture. I felt that he was probing Sonya’s logic for flaws and being disagreeably surprised at failing to locate any. I decided to help him.
“The point,” I clarified, “is that we have a permissive society here in Sardinia.”
“Of course, Witt!” agreed Pidge gratefully. “So you can strip without hesitation, Sonya.”
“Really?” asked the girl eagerly, her fingers already fumbling at the buttons of her blouse. “No one will mind? If I undress? If I remove all my clothes?”
We assured her that no one would object. At this point a twinge of guilt assailed me for I suddenly realized that I had erred. We were not in Sardinia at all but in England. Was it incumbent upon me, as a writer undeviating in his quest for truth, to admit this error and try to get Sonya to strip some other way?
“Of course,” I qualified cautiously, “people don’t only strip in Sardinia, you know, Sonya.”
“You are such a clever man, pelican,” the girl applauded me, gazing gravely into my face. For a while I gazed gravely back into hers but was disconcerted by a tendency of my glance to descend to where gleams of flesh showed through gaps in her partially unbuttoned blouse. Pidge suddenly beat both his magnetic boxers down with a sharp blow and cried:
“Get on with it, Sonya. Take yo
ur clothes off!”
“I would like to do that,” rejoined Sonya sadly, “but if I do, you know what the result will be?”
“What?” asked Pidge.
“I will be naked. You and Henry will see all my body.”
“But,” expostulated Pidge, “that’s the whole idea. Anyway, who is Henry?”
“Henry is my cousin in Sardinia.”
“But he’s not here!”
“Only because they would not give him visa!” Sonya protested.
“God, Witt, what are we to do?” Pidge asked unhappily. He picked up a book called Miniature Pumps but deposited it again without a glance.
“Sonya, my dear,” I volunteered, “let me try to explain. Professor Pidge and myself are anxious for you to undress. You are perfectly right in supposing that one consequence of this will be that we shall see your unclad body but I think I can assure you that neither the professor nor myself regard this as in any way a drawback.”
“I am glad you have explained this,” nodded Sonya gravely. “It makes everything much simpler.”
“I hoped it would, Sonya,” I approved. “Now perhaps you’d come to bed with us?”
As I had anticipated, my little clarification achieved the desired result. Sonya undressed and accompanied us to bed. There we all passed a most instructive night discussing different topics of general interest and practising a popular technique for the relief of nervous tension.
*
The next day I left Mushton by the mid-morning train and within a few hours I was in Bangor where I intended to make the acquaintance of Mr. Henry Glebe, his earth-borer and his son.
Glebe proved to be a decrepit man who lived in a picturesque thatched cottage. His family had, he informed me, inhabited this very cottage for nearly twenty generations. I asked him if there had previously been any inventors in the family and Glebe told me there had been dozens.
“However,” he bragged. “I’m the first to think of an earth-borer.”
The borer was taking shape in an old garden shed. It had not as yet taken much shape and most conspicuous amongst the articles strewn about the shed was a very large number of springs. I commented on this to Mr. Glebe and he explained that an earth-borer needed numerous springs.
“I hope to work in at least a thousand.”
I congratulated Mr. Glebe on his mechanical cunning. He thereupon coughed paroxysmally but did not respond in any other way.
“I had hoped to meet your son,” I remarked hopefully as the time for my departure approached.
At this a slight furrow of anxiety manifested itself on Glebe’s face.
“I daresay he’s off hitch-hiking, eh?” I probed humorously.
“That’s right,” Glebe assented dully. “He may be anywhere in the world: hitch-hiking. He may be in Coventry or he may be in Tokyo: hitch-hiking.”
I had to leave Bangor without meeting this important character.
*
I flew next to Ireland to meet Pad Dee Murphy. This was the prospective hero for whom I felt most instinctive sympathy. The other two were—oh, valuable productive citizens but I, like all men of the highest intellect, have always felt a deep nostalgia for the soil.
I spent weeks with Pad Dee, weeks of fierce labour under the broiling Connemara sun, weeks of squelching through reeking paddy fields, clutching some green shoots in my fist and occasionally plunging into oily water to fasten a nursling securely into some mulch. I spared myself nothing, determined to soak myself in peasant ways. In the mornings it was I who leaped first from my rude pallet (across which, throughout the night, barely rippling my slumber, cobras and venomous spiders had scuttled). Yes, I disciplined myself to rise first and then, approaching the couch where Pad Dee and his gracious lady lay, prostrate myself ceremonially before them and beg for permission to perform the early chores.
“Is it good,” I would inquire in a sing-song lilt which I had readily acquired, “is it good for thy servant, Clive Witt, fool of a scribbler, to harness the yak, this sunrise, oh Pad Dee?”
The yak was not, I confess, the aspect of paddy life that appealed to me most. It was a large beast and it made a curious sound as if it secretly yearned to be a trombone player. Moreover, it reeked rather offensively, reminding me of the ill-kept doss-house I had used in an early novel. Still, I fancy that, after a few weeks, as I stumbled along at the back of the wooden plough, I was barely distinguishable from any veteran yak-hand.
I learned the simple, pregnant ways of the countryside, how to tipple poteen, how to prostrate myself to Krishna, with a low, musical chant, as the wild call of the muezzin gurgled down from the parish church.
In the evenings, after our simple meal of fish eyes and jute, we would discuss the events of the neighbourhood, how this farmer had sold his daughter in marriage to a tractor salesman, how the other had got stoned on Guinness and drowned in the lower meadow. Better that this idle gossip, however, were those evenings when Pad Dee gratified us with a story, such as only he could tell, rich in local lore, uniting the simple piety of his ancestors with a shrewd assessment of contemporary events. The story I remember best is one that I always think of as “The Buddha and the Beehive”.
“One day,” it goes, “the Buddha was out driving in his new Jaguar when he came to a site where a factory was being built. He paused to observe the lively scene and a policeman approached and informed him that he was not at liberty to park there. The Buddha smiled warmly at the officer of the law and, pointing delicately with the middle finger of his left hand, indicated a beehive which had not yet been displaced by the bulldozers and earth-moving machines which were clattering about.
“‘And what,’ he asked sweetly, ‘of those bees? Are they at liberty to park there?’
“The policeman scowled momentarily and then replied:
“‘I know of no regulations covering bees, sir.’
“The Buddha then spread out his hands to indicate the busy activity all around and asked rhetorically:
“‘Are not these men too like bees, erecting a new hive for members of their little race to toil within?’
“‘Candidly, sir,’ replied the policeman, ‘I don’t see what you’re driving at. However, I must inform you that this is the site of a diabolically secret new defence ministry plant and if you don’t shove off immediately you will be subject to arrest.’
“‘But I am the Buddha,’ explained the Buddha, ‘from whom all things flow.’
“Whereupon the policeman arrested him and the Buddha got seven years for spying.”
I was delighted at the forceful simplicity of this little tale, only one of many that testified to the deep wisdom Pad Dee had imbibed from his environment.
*
Finally, I had to take leave of Connemara and make my way back to London. I was eager to see my wife and children, and anticipated a touching reunion.
The first thing I noticed, as I marched up the drive, was a large hole in the front wall of the house. This surprised me since I could think of no useful purpose for such a hole. True, it provided an alternative entrance but I felt that this trifling advantage was not offset by its unsightly quality. I walked through the hole into our living room and found my wife there, contemplating several large packing cases marked: “cinnamon”. As soon as she saw me a cry of mingled joy and surprise issued from her lips and for some moments we were too busy embracing to discuss the hole.
Then I asked her about the hole and she said that it was exceedingly offensive and she hoped I would arrange to have it closed up.
“But how did it get there, Muriel—er—”
“That publisher of yours—at least, I’m virtually certain he was behind it.”
She then explained that one day, shortly after my departure, a short, bearded man, who claimed to be a philologist, had driven up on a powerful bulldozer. He had been unskilled in the operation of the machine and, after bucking about the garden for some time, had driven it straight through the wall into our living room. He had then back
ed out, apologized profusely in classical Rumanian, and driven away. Naturally I made a mental note to investigate this curious development further, and then I asked my wife if the children, or at least the bulk of them, were well.
“The children?” she asked, somewhat blankly I felt.
“Well yes—all those children—you know, the ones we’ve had over the years.”
My wife confessed that she hadn’t seen any about for some time and I too noticed that the house seemed remarkably quiet. However, I was not sorry about this since I felt a period of creative activity approaching. I retired to my study and, armed with the detailed information I had garnered on my travels, sat down to compose the first chapter of my new novel which, with a flash of inspiration, I decided to call:
THE MIXTURE AND THE BAG
Chapter 1
Bill Glebe turned from the window of the little cottage in Bangor. His library book Miniature Pumps lay open where he had left it. Bill had learnt from that book a great deal that he had not known before about miniature pumps. But now, suddenly, restlessness seized him. He walked over to his drug chest where he kept a large assortment of narcotic drugs and contemplated the various pills, shreds, pastes, roots and other substances. Next he spent a little while searching for a suitable vein and finally located one nestling in the left lip of his navel. Delicately inserting the needle, he drew out a small flower of blood, rather like a fuschia, and replaced it with a hefty charge of mixed drugs. He then gave a noiseless whoop and leapt out of the window into his earth-borer …
THE MIXTURE AND THE BAG
Chapter 1
Bill Glebe stood at the roadside, hailing passing cars. Where was he? He had reached England again only the night before. He had obtained a lift on a lorry and he hoped that, before exhaustion claimed him, he had murmured the word “Bangor”. But had he? All he knew was that he had slept through the night until the driver had shaken him and said:
“This is where you descend, sir.”
Slowly images clarified in his mind. The first image was like a yak but much smaller, about the size of a miniature pump. It spoke to him in a girl’s voice, Sonya’s voice, saying:
