Swing Low, Swing Death

by R. T. Campbell

  Douglas was saved the trouble of thinking by the beaming vision of Mr. Carr who appeared in the gallery waving a newspaper.

  “Hullo, old cock,” he said, “we’re winning. We are nearly rich men. If the horses don’t all get glanders before the next race we may be rich men.”

  He looked at Alec enquiringly. “You know anything about horses?” he asked and Alec shook his head. “Sorry, if you had you might have helped me. I’m working on a system. It’s bound to make me a millionaire—the only thing is that I can’t quite understand it myself.”

  Alec cocked an eye at Douglas. The latter understood that he was not doing his duty so he performed the necessary introductions. He said that Mr. Carr was a famous interior decorator.

  “Don’t you believe it, son,” Mr. Carr leered villainously, “I’m just one of old Bellamy’s geniuses. He has geniuses as some people have mice. If he can’t understand anything he comes to the conclusion that the thing is a work of genius. It makes life very simple for him. Hush, here he comes.”

  The figure of Dr. Cornelius Bellamy was bearing across the floor with the dignity and determination of a full-rigged ship carrying a load of wheat.

  Chapter 6

  Morning Meditation

  THE NEXT day Douglas felt as though he had been living in a factory for turning rabbit-skins into bowler hats, and that somehow the whole production of fur had landed in his mouth. The top of his head was made of very thin cellophane and there were little men dancing on it. He tried to remember what he had been doing. It came back to him gradually.

  He had managed to play his part to perfection at the press-show. So it could not be that. Somewhere or other, like a figure of ill-omen he could recall seeing Mr. Carr, a Mr. Carr full of all the joy of life and a good deal of the less-poisonous spirits of the West End. This was a clue.

  The whole story unrolled itself before him. About two-thirds of the way through the press-show Mr. Carr had come up to him.

  “Here you are, Douglas cock,” he had said, withdrawing an immense wad of notes from his pocket, “your winnings.” Douglas had looked at the money as if it was not real, and Mr. Carr had become impatient. “Come on,” he had said, “take it. It won’t bite you. But don’t you play dice. They bite.”

  That was, Douglas realised, all that there was to it. He had thought that the money was unreal and had tried to spend it buying drinks. There seemed to be a conspiracy on his behalf. Almost all the barmen in town had seemed to be only too pleased to accept the bogus money.

  He turned over in the bed and felt like an Indian fakir on a mattress of sharp pointed nails. He realised that he had not done more than take his shoes off. Very slowly, in case he broke, he rolled himself off the bed and undressed. He went into the bathroom and greatly daring, lowered himself into a tepid ten inches of water. The noise of the water running sounded like all Niagara in his head. He certainly felt better. He took a look at his watch. As he feared he would be very late indeed. He hoped that no one would have noticed his absence.

  Every step he took on the hard pavement seemed to be amplified at least a million times by the time the jarring reached his head.

  Much to his surprise he entered the Museum and made his way up to the library unobserved. He sat down at the desk and took up the cards from various booksellers, reporting books which they assumed the library might require. It really was rather fun, Douglas thought, to be able to sit down and order a thirty-guinea book without the least hesitation.

  He was about two-thirds of the way through the job when the slim figure of Francis Varley inserted itself through the door. He came over and sat on the edge of the desk, swinging one leg, clad in a perfectly creased grey tweed. Douglas was suddenly aware of the bagginess of his own Harris trousers.

  “Good morning, my dear Douglas,” Francis’s tone was slightly mocking, “how do you feel this morning?”

  “Not at all well,” Douglas replied, “did I do anything really awful last night?”

  “It all depends on what you mean by ‘awful’,” said Francis; there was a far-away look of amusement on his face, “Emily was buying dinner for the learned Doctor and myself in the Café Royal when you looked in through the back door and spotted us. You wove, rather than walked, towards us and stopped, looking sternly at Bellamy. You fixed him with what I can only describe as an Ancient Mariner glare and announced that you were a genius. That was all right, but to justify your claim I’m damned if you didn’t take a piece of paper from your pocket and proceed to read a sort of sonnet on the subject of the judgment of the learned Doctor. I don’t think he enjoyed it. My dear Douglas, as you know he has no sense of humour. He was less amused than Queen Victoria ever was.”

  “My God,” said Douglas, clutching at his stomach which had just performed a semi-revolution on its own, “bang goes my job.”

  “Oh no,” Francis sounded positive, “Bellamy was furious and would have done you out of your job if he could have, but you have an ally in the shape of dear Emily, she stood up for you like a hero and I did my best to say what I could for you. You’re all right, but I would suggest that the next time you see the Doctor you do a little polite grovelling and that, next time you get lit, you pick on someone else. Now, my dear, if you had picked on me, I would have been, I may say, flattered to think you thought me worth pen and ink.”

  Douglas felt rather hollow. Every time he got really drunk, it seemed, he managed to do something which he afterwards regretted. He pulled himself together.

  “Is the Doctor around?” he asked Francis, who nodded, “oh well, I’d better get it over.”

  He rose to his feet and it seemed that he was about to hit the roof with his tender scalp. Escorted by Francis he went slowly down the stairs. He would not have dared the lift with his inside the way it felt. The lift would, he was sure, have killed him.

  Dr. Bellamy with the look of one who had performed a useful work of creation, was standing in the middle of the large gallery. There was something god-like about him. It was obvious that, so far as he was concerned, he found it good.

  Francis left Douglas at the door and he went slowly across the polished floor. Dr. Bellamy did not hear him coming. He was looking with great satisfaction at a piece of cloth which was draped at one end of the gallery, one of the pieces which Ben Nicholson had printed with his blocks. This held the secret of the Ernst until the afternoon, when a large mechanical rat, which could be seen in a corner, half-hidden by the stuff, would be released to drag the veil away.

  “Hum,” Douglas cleared his throat awkwardly and stood with his weight on one leg. Dr. Bellamy turned his head and looked at him as if he was a particularly bad painting by Millais. There was the cold appraising look which augured no good.

  “Oh,” said Douglas, “I hear I was very rude to you last night. I just wanted to say I was sorry. I was drunk or I wouldn’t have done it.”

  “My dear boy,” the voice was not full of endearment, “I know that you were drunk. It was obvious to everyone in the room. The only question that interested me was why you had to choose me as the subject of your puerile lampoon. Did you like your father?”

  This seemed a bit odd to Douglas who had a momentary fleeting vision of the painting of the little boy in blue being asked by Cromwell’s soldiery, “When did you last see your father?” Then he realised that the Doctor was being psycho-analytical.

  “No,” he said hopefully, “I loathed my father. Why?”

  Dr. Bellamy did not seem to hear him, but became engrossed in his own ideas. “Ah, that,” he murmured, “explains it all. I am the father-imago. It is a simple case of transference.”

  He suddenly realised that Douglas was waiting to see if he had been forgiven. He looked at him with the benevolence of an Old Testament god, unbending, knowing all and forgiving all.

  “My dear Douglas,” his voice was patronising, but kindly, “I quite understand your outbreak now. You were substituting me for the figure of your hated father and, uninhibited by drink, you
desired to do what you could to hurt, not realising, of course, that I am above such hurts. Naturally, realising that the sickness does not lie in your conscious mind, but in your neurotic personality, I can do nothing but forgive you. You, my dear Douglas, were not to blame.”

  “Thanks,” said Douglas, thinking that it was very odd as he had, in the first place, never known his father, and in the second, he had written the poem when he was sober. It had merely been an expression of his dislike of Dr. Cornelius Bellamy and had had nothing to do with father-imago, whatever that might mean.

  Dr. Bellamy was now, having satisfactorily explained things to himself, full of not only the milk but also the cream of human kindness. He beamed at Douglas in a paternal way. It seemed that the words “dear little fellow” were almost clogging his throat.

  “I wonder, my dear Douglas,” he said, “if these Chirico photographs have ever turned up? I wished to consult them myself, for, as you heard yesterday, Ambleside seems to be anxious about the genuineness of certain paintings in his possession. Of course, he is wrong, but I feel that, should I be able to produce satisfactory documentary evidence, it would put the dear fellow’s mind at rest.”

  “No,” said Douglas, “I’m afraid that someone’s swiped them. It’s really a bit thick that anyone should do that.”

  “Indeed, I agree with you,” the Doctor was affability personified, “it is indeed most provoking. I had hoped that a careful examination of the photographs through a strong glass would shew an unmistakable identity of brush-strokes. This would have eased Ambleside’s mind considerably.”

  “Hullo, Bellamy,” it was Francis Varley. “Has this young scoundrel said he’s sorry about yesterday evening?”

  “Why, yes,” the Doctor looked surprised and a little offended, as if it was none of Francis’s business, “we have discussed the matter and have come to the conclusion that owing to a neurosis of his personality his uninhibited self performs acts of transference. I was about, when you entered, to suggest that he put himself in my hands. I know a most excellent analyst who would quickly solve his conflicts for him.”

  Hell no, Douglas kept his thoughts to himself. I’m not going to be psycho-analysed. If I was I might stop being neurotic and then I might stop writing poems. He nursed his neuroses carefully, and thought of it fondly, as a sort of pet kitten. He thought of a beautiful chorus for a comic song: “So we nurse our neuroses around Russell Square.” He decided that he would work it up one of these days.

  Francis did not pay any attention to the Doctor’s statement. “I thought you were talking about Chirico,” he said, “and I wondered whether there had been any further information about the outrage?”

  “No, my dear fellow,” Dr. Cornelius Bellamy looked rather as though he had been assaulted from behind, “I consider that my statement, that it was the act of someone who had become obsessed to a psychopathetic extent, is all that we will ever know.”

  “Yes,” Francis spoke slowly, “if that is the reason. I myself feel that there was something about the painting’s genuineness which resulted in its destruction.”

  “Nonsense, my dear fellow,” the Doctor was almost genial, “of course, the painting was genuine. Do you not believe that I would not have known at once if it had been spurious, or even a copy by the artist?”

  “I suppose so,” Francis did not sound convinced. He shook his head gently and wandered off to look at the large cubist Picasso at the far end of the room. To one side of the Picasso hung a painting on glass, one of the studies for The Bride stripped bare by her own bachelors, by Marcel Duchamp, and on the other there was a picture of a bicycle suffering the torments of hell, by Oscar Dominguez.

  Douglas realised that he had nothing further to say to the Doctor, so he made one or two obscure noises and pushed out of the gallery. On the landing outside he found Alison and Jeremy Flint. They were, as usual, engaged in quarrelling, or rather Alison was telling Jeremy that he had no sense and he was agreeing weakly, in a voice that shewed that he had no hope that his agreement would still her bitter tongue. They did not stop as Douglas approached. This, he told himself, was rather embarrassing; if they had tried to appear pleasant to one another when a third person came near he might have been able to sympathise with one or other of them. He did not like the way that they involved chance passers-by in their domestic or professional troubles.

  “Look here, Douglas,” it was Alison, “don’t you think that the old Countess Moonstone should have been invited?”

  The tone was threatening. Douglas looked rather helpless. “I don’t really know,” he said, “but then, you see, I don’t know the old Countess.”

  Both of them looked at him as if he had declared that he did not know the name of Cézanne. He saw that he had dropped a major social brick. He tried again.

  “That’s the old bird with the blue hair,” he began and was stopped abruptly by Alison, who pounced on the inaccuracy. “Violet,” she said, “very pale violet.” It seemed to Douglas that he had committed another gaffe. He held his tongue.

  “She is of no value whatsoever,” Jeremy seemed to draw strength from the presence of a third party. “She never buys pictures nowadays and, as news value, she is completely worked out, and no reputable editor will pay the least attention to her. They all know that she is nothing more than a publicity seeker. She committed social suicide the day she hired that hansom cab outside the Café Royal and proceeded to bite the horse in the beam end. Everyone knew that she was thinking of the ‘man bites dog’ story and not a paper in the country dared print it. If they had she could have got immense damages for libel. After all, she might have fallen forward on the old horse and her old clackers might have drawn blood. Don’t you agree, Douglas?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Douglas was intentionally vague. “You see I can’t think about things like that. They make me sad. I feel so sorry for the horse.”

  Neither of them seemed to be able to think of a good come-back to this, so Douglas gave a wave that might have been interpreted as the ‘we who are about to die salute thee, O Caesar’ gesture and passed on up the stairs.

  On the landing outside the library he saw the crouched figure of Mr. Carr. He thought that Mr. Carr was alone for a moment and then he realised that, equally crouched at the far end, there was a bunched figure wrapped in a long black coat. This figure presented a face which looked as though it had been blown upon by half the sand-storms and blizzards in human history. The rheumy eyes seemed to be looking inwards.

  Mr. Carr looked up at Douglas. “We’re just having a game of marbles,” he announced with the satisfaction of one who announces that he has suddenly become convinced of the imminence of life after death. He sighted skilfully and flicked his thumb. The gaily striped glass marble shot along the terrazzo flooring and scattered the collection in front of the black clad bundle.

  The bundle produced a cackle. “Ye’re going off, Ben,” she said, “I don’t know what your father would say.”

  “Ho,” said Mr. Carr in a disgusted voice, “who have you decided was my father this time?”

  “None of your business,” the bundle said sharply. By this time Douglas had gathered that this was the fabulous mother, aged a hundred-and-two.

  Mr. Carr looked at her in an injured manner. “I’d like to know,” he said in a bitter voice, “whose business it is if it isn’t mine?”

  “Can’t you see the gentleman wants to pass?” the mother said, waving a thin blue claw at Douglas. Mr. Carr seemed to be suddenly aware of Douglas.

  “Hullo, hullo, hullo, cock,” he said in a pleased voice, “meet my mother. The worst mother any man ever had but still my mother. It’s funny,” his voice became pensive, “a man mayn’t know who was his father but he’s bound to be damn well certain of his mother.”

  “I’ll thank you, Ben,” the bundle was prim, “to keep a clean tongue in your head. By God, sir, if your father was here he’d horsewhip you within an inch of your life.”

  “If he had a horse,
” said Mr. Carr darkly. “I don’t believe I had a father. I think that I was one of the earliest experiments in artificial insemination. That,” he became indignant, “is why I don’t like biology. I don’t believe in it. As for her, she calls herself my mother, well,” he shrugged his shoulders, “she may be my mother for all I know. Sometimes I think I’m a changeling. You know the sort of thing. She gets drunk and leaves me lying around and the Salvation Army come and take me away. Then she starts looking around for me and finds another baby, so I’m no longer me, but someone else.”

  This involved sentence seemed to exhaust Mr. Carr. He ignored the cackle of protest that came from his mother. He put his hands round his person as if fitting on a life-belt and they came away holding a stone litre bottle of Bols gin.

  “Have a drink,” he said hospitably, and his tone became threatening, “you’d better have it now, before she gets hold of it. I don’t know,” he sounded a little bewildered, “why they call it mother’s ruin—it ruins me buying the stuff.”

  Douglas wondered what his stomach would say to the sudden acquisition of a quantity of Hollands gin. He decided that he might as well risk it. He tilted the bottle to his lips. It went down all right and the carnival which various insects were holding inside him shut down abruptly.

  Mr. Carr’s mother looked at him drinking. Her old face became smooth with emotion as she watched the drink go down.

  “Steady, now steady,” she said anxiously, “don’t take it all. Did your mother never tell you that ladies came first?”

  “You don’t call yourself a lady, do you?” said Mr. Carr. “It’s the last thing I’d call you, you hag, you harridan, you succubus, you witch, you old hen, you mare, you mule, you bitch, you—bah!” His imagination ran dry. Mrs. Carr was not put by this. She beamed at him and, reaching out, took the bottle from Douglas. Mr. Carr made an ineffectual grab for it in mid-air.