Swing Low, Swing Death

by R. T. Campbell

  He looked disconsolately at the hand-basins. A nailbrush caught his fancy and he picked it up and struck it into the wall, above an enamelled notice requesting gentlemen to adjust their clothing.

  For a moment Douglas thought of drawing his attention to the fact that the apartment he was decorating was intended for ladies only, but he held his peace, imagining that perhaps there was some deep and disturbing significance in the appearance of that notice there. He left Ben Carr fixing the head of a horse, broken from some child’s toy, so that it appeared to be about to take a bite from the plump rump of a Victorian ballerina, lithographed on the cover of a song.

  Inside the principal gallery there was a certain amount of activity. Dr. Cornelius Bellamy, his pince-nez fixed firmly on the saddle of his Roman nose, was engaged in examining a large painting by Paul Delvaux in which a forest suddenly changed its mind and became young nude females from the waist up. The Doctor tilted his head this way and that. He stepped back and he stepped forward. He held up one hand as if measuring with it and then he nodded.

  “Yes, my dear Emily, yes,” he spoke with the decisiveness of one who is accustomed to have his words treated seriously, “I certainly do think it is an acquisition, a very distinct acquisition. A very remarkable painting, if I may say so.”

  In front of the Chirico which he had disparaged in the morning, Francis Varley stood with Julian Ambleside.

  “But, my dear Ambleside,” he was saying irritably, “can’t you see the difference in the handling of the paint between this picture and that out there?”

  Julian Ambleside scuttled sideways between the two pictures. His broad ugly face was intent upon details of technique.

  “I think I see what you mean, Varley,” he replied, “but I can’t say that I agree with your deductions from the difference in handling. After all there is five years difference between the dates of the paintings and that, surely, is sufficient to explain the increase in looseness. I may tell you, privately, that this picture came to me from an absolutely unimpeachable source. On documentary grounds alone I would have no hesitation in saying that it is exactly what it purports to be, a picture painted by Chirico in 1917.”

  Francis Varley shook his head sadly. Douglas could see that he was not convinced. He wondered what luck Francis had had in his apologies to Emily.

  “How did you get on, Francis?” he asked, “did you get your Miró etching? Have you changed your mind about the picture?”

  “Hush, my dear boy,” Francis looked grave, “the very walls have ears.” He looked towards Emily and Dr. Bellamy who were strolling slowly round the room. “As a matter of fact, my boy, I got my Miró and a Klee lithograph. But the picture still worries me. However, that’s not my pigeon. Mine but to catalogue and arrange. I shed my expertise with my coat and hat when I enter these portals. I become the instrument of the almighty dollar.”

  Douglas turned his head in time to see Mr. Carr slink into the room, pick up a fur-glove lying on the floor and disappear again. He shook his head sadly. He noticed that Emily had the companion glove under her arm.

  “If you want your glove, Emily,” he said gloomily, “before it becomes a part of the decoration of the ladies’ lavatory you’d better hurry. Carr has just walked off with it.”

  Emily seemed to be about to go to the rescue of her glove. It looked, Douglas thought, one of a most expensive pair. However, as she was about to go, she was restrained by Dr. Cornelius Bellamy’s hand on her arm.

  “My dear lady,” he said earnestly, “consider for a moment. What does your glove mean to you? Is your glove more valuable than the creative instincts of an artist? Would you be responsible for a trauma in the creative process? Think, my dear Emily, and you will see that I am right. Carr is a sensitive man and the thought that you resented some small activity on his part, such as taking your glove, merely because he felt that his decoration required it, might be quite enough to interrupt the whole process and destroy the masterpiece which he is creating for you. You, my dear Emily, have enough of the imagination of an artist to know how a seemingly trivial setback can ruin a major work, and I think I can safely say that, at this very moment, Ben Carr is engaged in the toils of creating his masterpiece, creating it for you, my dear Emily.”

  Emily Wallenstein flushed. To think that she had been sufficiently insensitive as to consider, even for a moment, disturbing the creative work of an artist.

  She need not have concerned herself. Having placed her glove so that it pointed to a miniature water-closet labelled “Gentlemen,” Mr. Carr had retired round several corners to a comfortable café, much frequented by the chauffeurs of those who were eating worse and at much greater expense in the larger and gaudier parts of the district. He was engaged, figuratively, in casting his bread upon the waters. In other words, he was playing poker with Emily’s chauffeur and another gentleman of indeterminate profession. With Douglas’s half-crown as capital he was, as he said to himself, making a killing. It really was fortunate that he was so friendly with the man who prepared these cards. A tiny spot here or the absence of one there made all the difference and, after the cards had been “finished” in all senses of the word, they were so perfectly repacked that no one could tell the difference between them and a pack just purchased at random in a shop.

  As he dealt himself a straight flush, Mr. Carr whistled softly between his teeth. He decided that he would call it a day when he had won fifteen pounds, and he hoped to God that Maggie, who was his wife in everything but fact, wouldn’t take it all off him later in the evening at dice. He kept on meaning to do something about those dice of hers; he knew that they were loaded, but he was too lazy and the result was that she always cleaned him out of every penny he had. She was a bitch, she was, he told himself bitterly, it was no use trying to fob her off with I.O.U.s. One of these days, perhaps, if his luck held and Emily was as rich as she seemed to be, he might have a bank account and then he’d pay Maggie back. He’d give her a dud cheque—he was damned if he wouldn’t.

  He still could not quite understand how he had become an interior decorator. It was all an accident. One of his children, the one called Dorinda about whom he was not certain of his side of the paternity, had run off to find her undoubted mother. He had received an urgent postcard, from an address in the east of London, asking him for God’s sake to come and take the child away. A man of patriarchal instincts, he had not hesitated but had departed forthwith on the back of a vegetable van to collect the cuckoo missing from his nest. He had failed to locate his rightful wife but had heard Dorinda’s cheerful voice issuing from the inside of the deserted bomb-damaged chapel.

  She had been speaking to herself. “Well,” she said, putting a piece of encaustic tile next to a worn-out shoe in the wall which she had coated with cement, pilfered from a nearby builder’s lot, “suppose we put this here. Yes.”

  She had stepped back to admire her handiwork and had caught sight of her father. “I’m having such fun,” she said, “come on and give me a hand.”

  Mr. Carr, a man of simple imagination, had entered into the spirit of the game. He had actually collected more cement behind the builders’ backs and had let his fancy run riot among the remains of bombed houses. After two hours’ work the deserted chapel had become transformed.

  Dr. Cornelius Bellamy, walking in search of a taxi after giving a lecture on the subject of children’s paintings, had heard the noise of joyous creation issuing from the chapel and had allowed his curiosity to direct his steps. He was, as he afterwards said, frankly astounded by what he saw. From that moment Mr. Carr had not looked back. He did not look ahead either. He swept up his winnings and, apologising to the disappointed players and promising them their revenge upon a later date, he departed.

  The feeling of money in his pockets was pleasing, although he knew that the pleasure was bound to be transitory. He walked back to the Museum, pausing only to buy three shillings’ worth of the most violently coloured sweets he could find.

  When he
had cemented the sweets to the walls of the ladies’ lavatory he decided that the effect was all that could be desired. He looked in at the gallery again. The Doctor was still lecturing Emily Wallenstein upon the subject of art.

  “Oy, Doc,” cried Mr. Carr, “come and give us a bit of criticism. I think it’s going fine.”

  Emily and Dr. Bellamy entered the lavatory together. They looked in awestruck wonder at the walls. Emily was just about to make a remark about the behaviour of sweets in a steamy atmosphere, when the Doctor spoke first.

  “What a touch, my dear Carr,” he exclaimed in admiration, “these sweets will gradually perish and remind the spectator of the transitoriness of all human endeavours. To no one but yourself, my dear Carr, could such a stroke of genius have occurred. Now take myself, or Miss Wallenstein here, if we had had the idea of doing what you have done, we would have been certain to use coloured glass, but how apt, how very much more apt, are the melting sweets of childhood. ‘Shades of the prison house,’ my dear Carr, close around all of us, leaving you as the only free man in a servile world. Magnificent, my dear fellow. This is your supreme creation. It now lies with you to decide whether you will rest upon your laurels, these laurels which you have so royally earned, or whether you will go on to scale fresh heights. Which is it to be?”

  Ben Carr looked at the Doctor in a slightly puzzled kind of way. He did not know what the man was talking about. If people did want to have the walls of their houses covered with rubbish—well, he saw no reason why he should not humour them in their fancy, particularly as it paid well. But, for himself, if they wanted modern walls, he did not see why they should not cover them with a decent wallpaper. Now, only the other day, he had seen a very fine bit of jazz wallpaper, orange and muddy green and brown, in a shop in the Tottenham Court Road, and it had only cost eightpence a roll. It was a damn sight cheaper and a damn sight cleaner. But, he shrugged his shoulders, if people wanted to be mad, why let them.

  Douglas Newsome sat upstairs in the library. He looked at the cards he had already completed. There seemed to be no end to them. He was glad that they were not envelopes requiring to be stamped. His mouth felt dry at the very thought. He unlocked one side of his desk and took out a quart bottle of Tolly. Ah, that was better.

  The scarlet telephone beside him shrilled. He jumped nervously. It really was ridiculous the way his nerves seemed to have betrayed him of late. He reached out for the instrument. It was Emily. She had just received two parcels of books and she thought he ought to have them at once, so that he could fit them into their proper places in the shelves and on the cards. Douglas rang off and laughed a little bitterly to himself. He knew that, somehow or other, he would succeed in messing up the job. Perhaps it would be as well if Emily was to provide him with an assistant. He would, at least, be able to put the blame on the assistant. He felt rather ashamed of himself for the thought and went out into the lift.

  In Emily’s smart office Francis Varley was busily engaged in making notes on sheets of printed paper. Douglas recognised them as the proofs of the catalogue.

  Emily indicated two enormous parcels. Douglas’s heart went down with a thud. He had been hoping for two little parcels with one or two books in them, while it seemed that he would need to alter the arrangement of the whole library to engulf these.

  Just as he was about to leave the office, Francis looked up and spoke to him.

  “I say, Douglas, old dear,” his voice was ingratiating, “when you’ve pushed these books into the shelves I wonder if you’d be an angel and check over these proofs for me? I only want you to add any extra facts you know about reproductions and so on. It won’t take you a minute.”

  “Yes, Douglas,” Emily chipped in, “it would be good of you if you could do that. You might be able to remember something that occurred to neither Francis or myself. I would have asked the Doctor to do it, but he had to rush away to give a lecture on The Curative Powers of Art.”

  “All right,” Douglas was as ungraceful as he could manage without being positively offensive. It’s all very well for him, he thought of Francis Varley, he gets presents of drawings and prints. I get nothing but the thick and mucky end of the stick.

  He hauled the parcels out and placed them in the lift, and then he returned and collected the papers from Francis. When he got back into the lift he found that Julian Ambleside had crawled into it.

  “Are you going up to the library?” he squeaked. “Do you mind if I come with you? There are one or two things I want to look up.”

  Douglas indicated that he did not mind if the whole world tried to get into the lift. He shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t care if the whole of the Museum came up to the library.

  At the top Ambleside got out and scuttled into the library without paying the least attention to Douglas’s load of books. The latter looked after him in a way that was half mild reproach and half speechless fury. When Douglas had hauled the two parcels in and placed them on one of the tables, he turned to Julian Ambleside and asked him what he wanted to look at.

  “I would like to see Soby’s The Early Chirico,” the high thin voice replied, “and I would also like the files of Le Revolution Surréaliste. You have them both?”

  “Yes,” Douglas wasted no breath and collected the volumes. Oh ho, he said to himself, I know what is worrying you, my friend; Francis has started to make you doubt whether after all that picture isn’t one of the copies Chirico made during the nineteen-twenties.

  He left Ambleside to his researches and started to unpack the two bulky parcels. It was worse than he had feared. The contents were largely made up of pamphlets and odd copies of rare magazines such as Orbes and Proverbe. The trouble about most of these things was that they needed binding. The paper was frail as a dried bay-leaf. Douglas put them each in an envelope, writing the date and place of publication under the title and the editor’s or author’s name. As he thought, this was a slow and tiring job.

  Half-way through he was interrupted by Julian Ambleside who looked up from the books which were spread before him on a steel and plywood table made by Marcel Breuer in 1928 (most of the Museum furniture had some historical significance).

  The high thin voice piped at him querulously. “Douglas,” it asked, “can I see any photographs of Chirico’s paintings or drawings which you have in the files?”

  Well, Douglas said to himself, at least I’ve managed to file all the photographs, so I can do that. He went across to the battery of desk-drawer units, also of historical importance having been made in the carpentry workshop of the Bahaus at Dessau in the nineteen-twenties.

  He ran his finger through the “C’s.” Cézanne, Corot, Courbet, Chagall, Calder, Cornell, Chevall. He had not yet had time to arrange them in their proper order within the initial letters. He pawed through the folders again. Chirico was not there. He was sure that he had filed him under C. He remembered writing the name at the top of the folder:

  CHIRICO, Giorgio de.

  It was impossible that he should have filed it under D. All the same he took a look. No. The file of photographs had vanished.

  “I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Ambleside,” his tone was worried, “someone seems to have borrowed the folder of Chirico’s paintings. I know it was there because I filed it only yesterday. I wonder if Francis borrowed it?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Julian Ambleside sounded irritated. “Will you give him a ring and find out? It is rather important that I should see them. In fact, I may say that I want to see them very badly indeed. In the meantime can you give me all the reproductions of Chirico which you have. They may help me a little.”

  Douglas went round the shelves, pulling down back numbers of the London Bulletin, the American periodical View and so on. He laid the pile on the table beside Julian.

  Then he sat down at his desk and picked up the scarlet telephone. Francis Varley was still in Emily’s office. Douglas could hear the bright tinkle of glass and guessed that he was having a glass of sherry. The thought par
ched his tongue and he could barely speak.

  “I say, Francis,” he said through dry lips, “did you by any chance come up here and borrow the folder of Chirico photographs?”

  “No,” Francis was positive, “I’d have asked you if I was going to do that. Why? What’s the matter? Can’t you find them?”

  “They seem to have vanished,” Douglas said sadly, reflecting that with his personal genius for losing things no one would believe that he had not lost them. It was a damned nuisance that a thing like this should happen so early on in his new job. He rang off gloomily and went and looked through the C’s again. It had occurred to him that perhaps one folder might have slipped inside another. He took all the folders out and looked through the contents. He had made no mistake. The Chirico folder had completely vanished.