Swing Low, Swing Death

by R. T. Campbell

  Julian Ambleside seemed rather put out by the information. He clucked like a broody soprano hen. “Most annoying,” he said, “there were one or two points which I might have solved by looking at photographs which I cannot decide upon from these wretched half-tones. When they turn up, Douglas, I hope you will let me know immediately?”

  “Yes, I’ll let you know,” Douglas was melancholy, “I didn’t lose them, you know. I filed them yesterday and they should have been there. There were about sixty to seventy photos in the folder. Of course I hadn’t yet got round to the job of cataloguing them by making a list on the front of the folder. But then,” his voice was sepulchral, “as the folder has gone it would not make much difference, would it, if I had listed them?”

  He was not cheered. He returned to his desk and went on with his card-index.

  Crab-like Julian lost his way

  In Chirico’s melancholy squares;

  He wandered there for half-a-day

  And quite forgot to say his prayers.

  He wrote the above and considered it carefully. Then he looked across at Julian Ambleside. That person was filling scraps of paper with notes. His broad knobby face was twisted in grim determination as if he loathed the job of writing. Douglas wondered if he moved his tongue along his lips as the pencil ran along the lines. He tried to see but Julian’s face was slightly turned from him.

  Downstairs, in their office, the Flints were drawing out lists of people who were to be invited to the opening of the Museum of Modern Art.

  The balance had to be well preserved. Not more than a certain proportion of the arts could be invited to mix with money and with fashion.

  “I suppose,” said Jeremy, “that we had better invite the Press too. The art critics, of course, will come to the Press show, but we’d better have the social editors and so on at the opening?”

  “Of course,” Alison was acid, “surely you don’t need to ask me questions like that? Of course you invite the Press. Which reminds me that it might be as well to put aside one of the offices for them. If we leave plenty of drink around they will take it as a favour, and their reports will be correspondingly good.”

  Sylvia Rampion, Emily and Francis were sitting in Emily’s office, drinking sherry. Douglas had been right. Emily was looking very pleased.

  “Only three more days,” she said to Sylvia, “and I think everything will be ready in time. Don’t you?”

  “Of course, it will,” Sylvia was positive. Her hennaed hair shone like copper. “When is the Ernst from Ambleside due to arrive?”

  “To-morrow morning,” Emily said. “The dear Doctor had a brilliant idea about it. He suggested that we keep it veiled until the opening night and then unveil it, by releasing a large clockwork rat attached to the cloth by a cord. He suggests, and rightly, that the sight of the large rat will act as a reminder to people of their insecurity. It will make them look upon the pictures as things which are liable to explode in their minds. Too often, he said, people accept pictures as merely holes in their walls. We want to remind them that pictures are dangerous, that they bite. People forget, he said, that pictures are magic, often dangerous magic, and that they can be powers for good or evil. Emily, he told me, you have undertaken a great responsibility in founding this Museum, see that you do not weaken. I don’t know what I would do without the dear, dear Doctor. He has been a pillar of strength during these last weeks. But for him I sometimes wonder if the Museum would ever have got started.”

  “Yes, he has been most helpful,” said Sylvia dutifully. She wondered how much the Doctor got in the way of rake-off on the various pictures he had persuaded Emily to buy. Sylvia Rampion’s life had not been easy, and she had learned a habit of suspecting the motives of others. She took a good sip of sherry, reflecting that even if much about the Museum was intolerably bogus, at least the sherry was more than tolerably good.

  Emily smiled happily as she thought of her loyal band of helpers.

  Chapter 3

  Melancholy of a Day

  AS DOUGLAS walked slowly along Oxford Street he screwed his face up against the driving drizzling rain and reflected that he had never liked, and never would like, a job which required his presence at a set hour of each day. He was due at the Museum at ten in the morning, which meant that he had to get there about a quarter of an hour before that to open letters and do the general odds and ends. It would not have made the least difference, he thought, if he had been due at five in the afternoon. He would still have disapproved of the set hours. He looked at his Ingersoll. As he had suspected, he was late.

  He did not increase his pace. If he was late, well, he might as well be later. His mind formulated a verse about himself:

  Perpetually late he strode

  Through Oxford Street beneath the rain,

  The heavy minutes were his load,

  The loss of them he counted gain.

  One of Bourlet’s enormous vans stood outside the Museum in Iron Street. Men in green baize aprons were carrying in pictures of all sorts and sizes. Douglas stood aside to allow a weeping tormented face by Picasso to pass him.

  The lift shot him upwards and he got out, letting the spring gates close behind him. He entered the library. Dr. Cornelius Bellamy was standing talking to Julian Ambleside. Douglas looked at them without pleasure in his expression. He was convinced that they had arrived to torment him. They advanced towards him together, Dr. Bellamy slowing his determined pace to the crab-like scuttle of Julian.

  Douglas looked at the papers on his desk. The sight of them did nothing to cheer him. He realised that the announcement in World’s Press News that he had been appointed librarian to the new Museum of Modern Art had put all his creditors on his track. He recognised the handwriting of Mr. Dobell the bookseller of Tunbridge Wells. Hell, he said to himself, I thought I had paid that.

  “My dear Douglas,” the Doctor was affability itself, “Julian tells me that you have mislaid the folders of Chirico photographs. Is this so?”

  “No,” Douglas was short, “I haven’t mislaid it. I filed it in its proper place the day before yesterday and when Julian asked me for it, it was gone. I thought that Francis had borrowed it but he says he didn’t. Anyhow, I think he would have asked me if he had wanted it. He has enough sense to realise that I can’t keep things in order if I don’t know where they are. I expect someone took them to look at, and has forgotten to put them back. Oh, I know,” an idea occurred to him, “Francis had some idea yesterday morning that one of the Chirico’s might be one of his nineteen-twenties’ copies of his earlier work and not so early as the date on it implied. He told me he had mentioned it to Emily. Perhaps she came and took the folder, just to satisfy herself that he was wrong. After all, it’s her Museum and she’d feel no need to tell me what she was doing. I’ll ring her up and see.”

  Before Douglas had time to pick up the phone, however, the Doctor had taken a couple of enormous paces and pulled up in front of the desk-drawer units. He pulled one of the drawers open. He ruffled the tops of the folders, and took out one of them.

  “My dear Douglas,” his face was adorned with a frosty smile, “it just occurred to me that you, working under pressure, might quite easily have filed de Chirico under D, and not under C. I take a look and what do I find. I find the Chirico folder has slipped into that belonging to Salvador Dali. Here you are.”

  He placed the folder on the desk. His face held the satisfied expression of a man who has just solved a difficult problem in Euclid successfully.

  Douglas opened his mouth to protest that he had looked through the “D’s” the evening before, and that the idea that he might have made a slip had already occurred to him and been proved wrong. He shut his mouth again. What the hell, he thought, if they want to play the fool with folders why should I care?

  “Thank you,” he said politely and passed the folder to Julian Ambleside, who moved sideways towards the table where his books were still piled. He sat down heavily in the steel and fabric chair, anoth
er early piece by Marcel Breuer, dating from 1925.

  Dr. Cornelius Bellamy smiled. His benevolence shone on both Julian and Douglas. The latter did not feel gratified by it, but he could see no reason for expressing his disapproval.

  “Ah well, my dear Douglas,” the learned Doctor sighed, “we are all of us bound to make mistakes at one time or another. It is quite obvious to me that for some reason your subconscious desire was that the Chirico folder should be lost. Perhaps, my dear boy, your natural melancholy is in conflict with the melancholy expressed by Chirico in these early paintings? You required the assistance of an uninhibited character, such as I may say I am, to guide you to the photographs which your unconscious desire had buried out of your sight.”

  Hell, Douglas was not only gloomy but cross as he thought of answers, the damned things were not there, whatever my unconscious desire wanted to do to them. But he kept his peace. There was no point in starting an argument about the validity of Freud’s Psychopathology of Everyday Things at that hour in the morning.

  Dr. Cornelius Bellamy raised a hand in greeting. There was something of an episcopal blessing in his gesture.

  “I will leave you now, my dear boy,” he addressed Douglas, “having, let us say, solved one of the minor problems of your Psyche. I have, I regret to acknowledge it, work to do. Julian,” he turned towards Ambleside, “I will be interested to hear what you decided. Come round and have a drink this evening. About six?”

  “Thank you,” Julian Ambleside did not look up from the photographs, “I’ll be there at six.”

  Dr. Bellamy again raised his hand in salutation and departed. Douglas set to work to file the cards he had prepared the previous day. He was half-way through the job when he remembered that he had not yet filled in all the necessary details on the proofs which he had undertaken, or had had thrust upon him, to correct. He retired to his desk and looked at them with disgust.

  “Douglas,” the high voice interrupted him like the squeaking of a particularly obtrusive mouse, “Douglas, are you sure that these are all the photographs of Chirico that you have?”

  “Yes,” Douglas replied without looking up. “I sorted them out from the immense bundle of photos that Bellamy and Emily gave me. There should be about sixty or seventy of them.”

  Julian Ambleside wheezed on a high note. He started rustling the photographs noisily. The sound irritated Douglas.

  “But, Douglas,” the sharp voice was insistent, “there are nothing like that number here. There are only about forty odd, and none of them are of pictures of the date I particularly wanted.”

  “Oh, all right,” Douglas rose with an ungracious sigh and walked over to the table. He picked up the folder and looked quickly through the photographs. He ran through them again.

  There was no doubt that Julian Ambleside was right. About a third of the photographs were missing. He could remember that there had been photographs which he could not now find.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “someone must have been fiddling with them. I thought they weren’t in that drawer last night—in spite of old Bellamy and my psyche.”

  Rather surprisingly Julian Ambleside gave a high-pitched giggle. He stopped it half-way as if ashamed of himself. “The uninhibited character,” he said, “has been proved wrong.”

  “All the same,” Douglas went on, “I’m in charge of these photos, and it’s my job to see that they don’t get lost. I think I’d better go and see Emily about them.”

  “I wouldn’t bother her,” Julian Ambleside said, “it isn’t really of any importance. I can manage without them. Don’t bother.”

  Douglas was stubborn. “Damn it,” he said, “I’ve just said that I’m in charge of this library and I don’t like to find things getting lost so soon. If they start getting lost before the Museum opens what the hell will it be like after the place is open to the public. I must see Emily about it and report the loss to her.”

  “Very well,” Julian did not seem to be much interested in the loss of the photographs and had returned to James Thrall Soby’s The Early Chirico.

  Douglas decided that he would descend by the stairs. The lift moved so fast that it upset his digestion. He found Emily with Dr. Cornelius Bellamy in the main gallery. They were organising the erection of a vast mobile by Alexander Calder, driven by a small electric motor. The red and blue and black knobs whirled gaily or shimmered like aspen leaves when the Doctor turned the switch that made it go.

  “Emily,” Douglas was tentative, “I wonder if I can see you for a minute? I want to ask you about something.”

  Emily Wallenstein turned a vague smiling face. “Good morning, Douglas,” she said, “How are you and how is the library?”

  “I’m alive,” Douglas was mournful and his tone suggested that it was only by the use of terrific will-power that he was avoiding the grave which yawned open at his feet, “but it’s about the library that I wanted to see you.”

  “Oh, I’m sure the library’s all right in your hands, Douglas,” Emily was still vague. It was quite obvious that her mind was occupied by other things. The Doctor smiled at Douglas encouragingly. He made another start.

  “It’s just,” he said hurriedly, “that some twenty or more of the photos of paintings by Chirico are missing. I’ve looked for them and can’t find them.”

  “Oh, they’ll turn up, Douglas, don’t you worry,” Emily did not seem to be concerned about the loss. Douglas, who realised that some of the photographs were irreplaceable, being photos taken of the pictures at the time when they were painted, thought that she took the loss very lightly, but he shrugged his shoulders. It was none of his concern if Emily did not mind. He went back towards the door of the gallery.

  Ben Carr was just coming in. Under one arm he carried a loosely wrapped brown-paper parcel. The brown paper was stained with blood. Douglas assumed that he was carrying the joint which was to feed his brood of children.

  “Good morning, cock,” Mr. Carr spoke in a whisper, “can you lend me another half-dollar? I’d fifteen pounds last night, but Maggie took it off me at dice. Trouble is,” he became confidential, “that her dice are not straight. She always wins. She’s a bitch, she is. She’d only give me five bob this morning and I had to get this out of it.” He waved the meaty parcel. “It’s left me absolutely flat.”

  Douglas disinterred the required coin from his trouser pocket and went on, wrapped in the cloak of melancholy.

  Mr. Carr advanced into the room until he came up with Emily and the Doctor who were standing spellbound in front of a picture by Yves Tanguy of lonely little shapes in an immense desert beneath a volcanic sky.

  “Hullo, hullo, hullo,” he said cheerfully, and they turned to greet him. He fixed the Doctor with a determined eye and waved the meat at him. A large part of the paper flapped open, displaying the juicy red of uncooked rump-steak.

  “What you said last night, Doc,” Mr. Carr was unabashed by the strip-tease antics of his parcel, “put an idea into my head. I thought that even better than sweets on the wall would be chunks of meat. They’d give a proper putrifying atmosphere to the place as they went off. There’s nothing pongs like a piece of good meat going bad, and then there’d be the flies and the maggots. I reckon the whole setup would be pretty tasty after a few weeks, don’t you?”

  Emily did not seem to be entranced by the idea that her hygienic twentieth-century ladies’ lavatory should be made to pong like an old-fashioned charnel house. Even Dr. Cornelius Bellamy seemed to be somewhat startled by the fertility of Mr. Carr’s imagination. His face shewed that he had not given thought to the possible fruit that his carelessly broadcast seed of the previous afternoon might bear. He was obviously thinking of some excuse which would not hurt the feelings of the artist.

  “My dear Carr,” he began tentatively, “I must applaud the magnificent freedom of your conception. In fact I must say that I have never encountered a genius like yours for the unexpected and the appropriate. I may say that this gesture brings my opinion of yo
ur genius even higher, if that is possible, than it stood before. Your supreme gift, my dear Carr, is your complete disregard of inessentials and your remarkable grasp of the subject as a whole. But, my dear Carr, we have to consider not only the immediate or eventual intention of a work of art, but also its social significance. We have to consider whether decaying meat, ah, suspended in the, ah, ladies’ lavatory would not, let us say, create an immediate prejudice against the gifts which you display, my dear Carr, to such a remarkable extent. We have to consider whether the, ah, pong might not serve as a deterrent to those of whom we might in other circumstances make disciples.”

  “I get you, Doc,” Mr. Carr was unabashed. He swung the meat gently to and fro spattering blood on the polished floor. “The answer is no. That’s O.K. by me, cock.” He turned to Emily, “You got a frying pan around?” he asked in a friendly voice, “if you have I might as well cook this bit of meat up for my lunch. Waste not, want not. That’s the motto of Ben Carr.”

  Rather tremulously, Emily explained that she regretted that the Museum did not include frying-pans among its equipment, except in the small department that was devoted to the improvement in taste in Industrial Design.

  Mr. Carr did not appear to be satisfied by this explanation. “I won’t spoil the pan,” he urged, “I’ve cooked for years and I’ve never spoiled a pan. But if you won’t, you won’t and that’s all there is to it. I did think the meat would look kind of tasty stuck on the walls, but if you’d rather it wasn’t stuck on the walls, I guess the kids will eat it up this evening.”

  He walked out of the gallery, followed by a trail of drips of blood.

  Emily looked at the Doctor rather doubtfully. The Doctor had recovered his composure.

  “What a man, my dear Emily,” he said loftily. “One does not often meet a genius with such a magnificent and complete disregard for the usual social taboos. How magnificent was his conception! How supremely appropriate and satisfying! Those who retire from the disturbing presence of the pictures and the sculpture, in search of a momentary tower of escapism, are followed even there by the smell of rotting meat and the sight of maggots crawling across the walls. Their upset is not dispersed but increased a thousandfold and they fly back to the pictures, to find that there is no rest for them anywhere.”