The Merry Muse

by Eric Linklater

  Jane had spent most of the afternoon in his flat. He had given her lunch — a good picnic lunch — and for a little while they had been cheerful enough. But when she left him he had fallen into a profound melancholy. She had not, after all, been able to close the door. The inviting door to self-destruction was still wide open …

  He had been feeling lonely when Thomson came, and it was loneliness, not friendliness, that urged him to ask Thomson in. But friendliness quickly grew when he saw Thomson’s pleasure and heard the note of young exuberance as Thomson spoke of his ambition and his faith. It was a kindly impulse that made him open a bottle of whisky, to excite the geniality he felt was necessary, and it was the misfortune of his temperament that when his guest had gone — elated by conversation with a host who had talked and behaved exactly as a literary lion should behave — Hector found it necessary to finish the bottle. So the morning, with the church bells ringing, broke unkindly.

  But after his breakfast he shaved and dressed, then went to the Botanic Garden where he walked for two or three hours, and afterwards slept peacefully for most of the afternoon. He woke feeling hungry, and remembered that Thomson had brought him an invitation to dine with Mr Arbuthnot. There was no food in the flat, except bread and a cold ham, and Max Arbuthnot kept a good table. He would, perhaps, meet Jane’s husband, Simon Telfer; and to that he looked forward with cold curiosity. He foresaw no prospect of embarrassment. Telfer was a stranger, for whom he cared nothing; and it did not occur to him that Jane might be embarrassed by their meeting. He had a bath, and dressed. He telephoned for a taxi, and in a mood of easy composure was driven to Mr Arbuthnot’s fine house on the hill.

  He was the only guest. Max and his wife were in the drawing-room when he arrived, and a few minutes later Jane and her husband came in. Jane greeted him with frosty displeasure, but Simon was very genial. Within two or three minutes they were standing a little apart from the others, in the bay of a window, and Simon was saying ‘We nearly met a long time ago. I knew a friend of yours in the 6oth Rifles. At Sidi Rezegh.’

  ‘What were you in?’

  ‘2nd Carabiniers.’

  ‘I got wounded about that time. Not badly.’ ‘That’s why we didn’t meet.’

  A web of memory enclosed them. It was inaccurate now, and dyed by sentiment to a gentler hue than the realities it lightly held within its gossamer. But for a little while it cut them off from the others in the room, who knew nothing of the Western Desert and the mystique of those who had fought in its remote and arduous battles. They were enislanded in a memory of shared experience and the names that came, at first a little grudgingly, to the surface of their minds: names of men, and of empty, undistinguished, desert places. They talked together till dinner was announced, and when they went in to dinner they were conscious of a slight feeling of resentment at finding themselves on opposite sides of the table, and compelled to start new topics of conversation.

  With, as it seemed, a febrile impatience in her voice, Mrs Arbuthnot began at once to talk. ‘Your hands, Mr Macrae! What have you been doing to your hands?’ she enquired.

  ‘I’ve been scrubbing them,’ said Hector — and spread the long, thin fan of his fingers for scrutiny — ‘but they won’t look clean for another week or so. They blister, you see, and the blisters break, and dirt gets in.’

  ‘What were you doing to blister them?’

  ‘Fishing. But not on a river. Not gentleman’s fishing. I‘ve been working in the seine-net boats on the west coast.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘To see if it would make me sleep.’ ‘And did you?’

  ‘I couldn’t sleep much at night, when we were at sea, but the days went by in a drowsy procession that I found comforting.’

  ‘It sounds neurotic. Are you neurotic?’

  ‘It would be absurd to deny it.’

  ‘He’s a poet,’ said Max.

  ‘When,’ asked Mrs Arbuthnot, ‘did it become necessary to be a neurotic in order to write poetry?’

  ‘We, in my family,’ said Simon, ‘have always pretended to believe that we’re descended from the Norman poet Taillefer; who, you may remember, rode up and down in front of William the Conqueror’s army at Hastings, reciting his verses. Do you think he was normal?’

  ‘A rank exhibitionist!’ said Max. ‘And take William himself: William the Conqueror. What was he? A good soldier. A man who believed in honour, duty, chivalry — all that sort of thing — and wanted power. Well, what does that indicate? Nothing but neurosis. A profound and multiple neurosis. Ask a psychologist if you don’t believe me.’

  ‘But do you believe in psychologists?’ asked Telfer.

  ‘No!’ said Max. ‘And the grim fact I have to accept’ — he leaned forward, frowning in a pretended solemnity — ‘is that my life-long refusal to believe in Freud, Jung, and all the rest of them may be my neurosis!’

  The scowl on his face dissolved suddenly into an ebullience of laughter — he leaned back, laughing loudly, showing both ranks of his finely made, slightly yellow, artificial teeth — and Mrs Arbuthnot impatiently declared, ‘Now you’re being silly and tiresome. And if you’re going to be silly as early as this … ’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I be silly at my own table? Have silly men ever done as much harm to the world as sensible men? Not a bit of it! Dulce est desipere in loco — who said that? None of you knows, and I’ve forgotten. Well, what does it matter? A glass of wine, my dear Simon.’

  The fish and the Pouilly fumé were succeeded by a bevy of partridges and a tenderly decanted Léoville Poyferré of 1947. Relapsing into silence, Max ate with relish and drank with a hearty reverence. Then, when the partridges had been reduced to their fragile bones and a smear of gravy, he exclaimed — with no regard for the conversation of the others — ‘Landseer is coming back!’

  ‘Who?’ asked his wife.

  ‘Landseer, I said. Don’t I speak clearly enough?’

  ‘Where has he been?’ asked Jane.

  ‘Have you never heard of Landseer? A very great artist… ‘

  ‘Oh, that Landseer. Stags and mist and dying shepherds.’

  ‘And if you want to know where he’s been, he’s been in limbo. But he’s coming back! He used to be dear — very dear — and now he’s cheap: but he’s picking up. His price is rising, and if I can find a good one — and a big one — I’ll buy it. There’s room for a picture, a big picture, over the stairs.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ said Jane. ‘I couldn’t bear it! Think of getting up in the morning — a winter morning — and coming down to breakfast, and the first thing you see is a stag in the mist, or perhaps a shepherd, staring at you with melancholy eyes. No, you mustn’t!’

  ‘I know what I’m talking about,’ said her father firmly. ‘These pictures here — the Petty and the Orchardson — aren’t fashionable to-day, but they used to be, and they will be again. Think of Guardi and Canaletto: sixty years ago you could have bought ‘em for a song, and to-day you can sell ‘em for the price of the London Philharmonic. Do you know what I’d buy if I were a rich man? I’d buy Rossetti and Holman Hunt. They’re next on the list for a sensational rise. Sell your Impressionists and buy Holman Hunt — or Landseer! And if you ask me why, I’ll tell you. There are painters — there are writers, sculptors, composers — who have a tidal quality, a habit of coming back. They go out on an ebb-tide of neglect, or boredom, but they come back on the next flood, because they’re unsinkable. And Landseer is one of them! But your modern fellows, your abstract painters, they’re no good. They won’t come back. You were talking about neurosis a little while ago. Well, the fashion for abstract painting’s only a neurosis, and a bad one too. Neuroses don’t float.’

  ‘For as long as I can remember,’ said Jane, ‘Father has been saying that morals are declining, manners are decaying, and the whole world is on a ski-slope to perdition. But I don’t believe it!’

  ‘The painters of to-day aren’t the tidal sort, the sort who return, and there aren’t any tidal writer
s — except our friend Hector.’

  ‘I don’t think we have any very buoyant critics,’ said Hector. ‘For a writer to-day — for a young writer — perhaps the most deplorable thing is that there is no one whose praise can help him, or whose neglect can hurt him.’

  ‘The coolies are coming in,’ said Max in a sepulchral tone. ‘The coolies are on the march.’

  ‘Marching with Landseer?’ asked Mrs Arbuthnot.

  ‘That’s a different matter altogether! Landseer’s one thing, and this is another. Can’t I introduce a new subject if I want to? At my own table? And what I’m saying now is that the coolies are coming. They’re the new invaders. Coolies of every sort and colour: coming in from all sides, to trample us down. All those international Left Wingers: do you know the truth about them? They’re black men under their skins!’

  ‘If you’re going to talk like that,’ said Mrs Arbuthnot, ‘I refuse to stay and listen to you.’

  ‘Do you dispute the truth of what I’ve said?’

  ‘I think there are as many good black men in the world as there are good white men,’ said Mrs Arbuthnot.

  ‘That’s not the point.’

  ‘And in either colour the good are a very small minority. Now come along, Jane, and leave them to their port. — But don’t stay too long, because I want to talk to Mr Macrae.’

  They went out, and Max, still muttering ‘The coolies are coming,’ set on the table a decanter of port.

  ‘It’s a Cockburn ‘35,’ he said. ‘I’ve only got four dozen left of the ‘27, and that I’m keeping for myself. But there’s nothing wrong with the ‘35. It’s a damned good port. Help yourself, Hector — and you, Simon, you’ve got to be patient now. I asked Hector to come here for a particular purpose. I want to ask his advice. I want to pick his brains. And it’s a literary matter we’re going to talk about, that a soldier like you won’t find very interesting.’

  ‘I think the army of to-day is more liberal than it used to be.’

  ‘You mean you read books, do you?’

  ‘Some of us do.’

  ‘Well, it’s a book we’re going to talk about now.’

  He went to a small table and took from it a book that, with ostentatious care, he laid before Hector. It was the little volume, entitled The Merry Muses, that his sister had entrusted to him. ‘Now take your time,’ he said, ‘there’s no hurry. But when you’ve had a good look at it, let me know what you think.’

  With a fine assumption of detachment, he engaged his son-in-law in conversation about the state of readiness of his regiment; and now, when Mrs Arbuthnot and Jane had left the table, Telfer found him a sympathetic listener. They discussed technical problems — the loading of ships with men and their equipment, with the ponderous vehicles of war — and they talked of social problems. Telfer grew a little warm about the exorbitant influence of the mothers that so many young soldiers unhappily possessed. From the service point of view, he said, mothers were the curse of the modern world.

  ‘It used to be fathers,’ said Max. ‘When I was sixteen my father said to me, “Max, my boy, you’ve come to an age when, if you’re normally adjusted, you’re beginning to feel a certain interest in girls; and when girls are beginning to feel an interest in you. So you’ve got to be careful, and you’ve got to behave yourself. I want you to promise that you’ll never take more from a girl than she’s willing to give you.” Well, that impressed me. It impressed me deeply. But the old man spoiled it all by muttering, as he turned away, “And if you take all that the girls are willing to give, you’ll have more on your plate than you know what to do with.” ‘

  They were interrupted by Hector, who, closing the little book he had been reading, said with an abrupt and loud decision, ‘This is a deplorable collection, and it may be worth a great deal of money. The printed pages, except for one or two, are contemptible. The pages in manuscript are the work of a genius, but the sort of genius who makes a case for censorship. Is the handwriting Burns’s own?’

  ‘That’s one of the things I want to know,’ said Max.

  ‘It looks like his, but I can’t be sure.’

  ‘And the verses — the verses in manuscript — would you say they’re his own? His own composition?’

  ‘Unless there was another genius — a genius of the same sort, but of whom we know nothing — those poems are his. There’s no doubt of that. If they weren’t so good I might dislike them less.’

  ‘You dislike them?’

  ‘Intensely.’

  ‘But you say they’re good?’

  ‘They’re brilliant. They’re obscenity cut like a diamond to sheer brilliance. And that’s a bad description, for a diamond’s hard, it doesn’t feel, and these poems beat like a drunken pulse. They’re emotion — rank and bawdy emotion — polished to a diamond’s sheen: and to do that — to give pure sensation a literary surface that refracts the light is a feat of superlative genius. And still I don’t like them.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because, at heart, I’m a puritan. A staid and shrinking puritan.’

  As if he had been filtered and refined, Hector seemed to recede and become smaller and more intense. But the bone behind his face obtruded — or so it appeared — and dominated his expression. He spoke very softly.

  ‘I have always disliked,’ he said, ‘the coarseness of Scotch life in Burns’s time. Those clever, knowing louts, those cottage Lotharios, and the girls like moaning heifers who pretended reluctance and took their furious embraces with insatiable appetite. Think of their huge legs and the vacancy of their eyes! It was a loathsome country, the southern part of it —a people as rank as stoats, but indecently apt in prayer — and Robert Burns was sent as their redeemer. He suffered, and did redeem them. But also he enjoyed himself, in the commonest style of enjoyment, and I find it almost intolerable that he should have left the record of his enjoyment in verses that are true poetry. But, as I said, I’m a puritan.’

  ‘I’m not,’ said Max, with disarming honesty and uncommon mildness in his voice. ‘I like them: the verses in manuscript. I’ve read nothing, since I was a schoolboy, that so made me feel — well, perhaps I haven’t quite got over being a schoolboy.’

  ‘I am a Highlander,’ said Hector, ‘and Burns was a Low-lander. And I’ve never been more conscious of the difference between us. We can love more passionately than any Ayrshire bull, because, when we fall in love, it’s with a woman: not with the mere shape and excrescences of womanhood. It’s her voice, and the mind behind her voice, the fashion of her walking, the lilt of her thought and the tune in her blood that take us captive: not the female gloom of her, like a heifer in the shadow of the trees. But that’s what attracted Robert Burns — and then his genius made it all bright.’

  ‘Perhaps you won’t agree with me,’ said Telfer, ‘but I think it would all have been so much better if he’d written in English. He could write English when he wanted to, so clearly it was only an affectation to write in Scotch.’

  But now Max and Hector united to argue with the impenetrable Englishman. They deployed their knowledge, their full assurance, of Robert Burns’s unique and luminous command of language, and hotly assailed the insularity of Simon’s view. Hector, indeed, suppressing his private distaste, spoke with such eloquence of the classic discipline of Burns’s writing that Max began to wonder if £10,000 was not too modest a price to ask for sixteen pages of his impropriety. Perhaps £12,000 would be nearer the mark.

  ‘And remember,’ he interposed, ‘that what we’re discussing must be kept secret between the three of us. Absolutely and utterly secret! This book’s worth a lot of money if it’s proved to be genuine, and I’m responsible for its safe-keeping. I regard it as a fragment of our national heritage — and I’m going to have it properly valued, and see that its lawful owner is fully recompensed if she decides to part with it.’

  ‘Who is the owner?’ asked Simon.

  ‘It would be a breach of confidence to tell you that,’ said Max. ‘A grave brea
ch of confidence. A lawyer’s duty to his clients can seal his lips as closely as a priest’s.’

  ‘It’s going to be difficult to establish authenticity if no one is to know of the book’s existence except ourselves,’ said Hector.

  ‘I rely on you for that. You’re a poet and a scholar … ’

  ‘An exhausted poet and a very poor scholar.’

  ‘Try and find out something about the history of the book. There’s a poem addressed to “Honest Smellie”; and that means he was a rogue. But who was he? It may be useful to know that. And compare the handwriting with known examples of Burns’s writing.’

  ‘I can do that.’

  ‘Well, take it with you, and don’t let it out of your possession. And tell me, as soon as you can, what you’ve established.’

  ‘I can’t promise very much.’

  ‘If you do your best, I won’t be disappointed: I’m confident of that. And now let’s join the ladies, or we’ll get into trouble.’

  They had sat too long, however, and the sound of trouble met them at the drawing-room door. It was trouble orchestrated with wild adornment and brazen exclamation, and its source was a record made by a musician whom Mrs Arbuthnot identified as Dizzy Gillespie. She raised her voice to convey the information, and Max’s reply was a roar of complaint like a foghorn’s denunciation of foul weather. For a moment or two the room pulsated with conflicting noises, and then Mrs Arbuthnot was understood to say that if they had come a little earlier they might have heard Jelly-roll Morton. At this Max uttered a wordless bellow — anguish and wrath contending in his voice — and strode towards the gramophone. Mrs Arbuthnot got there first — first in a photo-finish — and having cut off the music, stood boldly in defence of the instrument; for when Max yielded to ill-temper, records flew out of the window.

  ‘What do you expect me to do with myself while you are drinking port and talking nonsense?’ she demanded. ‘Do you want me to sit blowing the fire like a Vestal virgin, palpitating with hope and fear till you come?’