The Merry Muse

by Eric Linklater

To Hector, who stood near him, he confided: ‘I’ve had a bit of trouble with my sister Jessie. It’s her property, that book: did I tell you that before? No, I don’t suppose I did. Well, she was a little upset when it seemed to have gone astray, and said I wasn’t a fit and proper person to take charge of it, and negotiate its sale, and so on and so forth. But now she’s had a change of heart! I gave it back to her last night, and said, “All right, my dear Jessie, handle it in your own way. Deal with it yourself. Find your own experts, have it valued, and arrange for it to be sold to your best possible advantage.” — And when I said that, she didn’t know what on earth to do. She admitted it. Admitted her total incapacity! And she had to eat humble pie. She had to ask me to take charge of it again. So that’s how the matter stands. That little book — and God knows how much it’s worth — has been entrusted to me, and I’ve accepted full responsibility for it. Within the next few days I may come and ask you what I ought to do about it.’

  Mr Belford’s response to Burns’s unknown poems was not enthusiastic. ‘Curious,’ he said, and passed the book to his partner, Mr Warrant.

  Mr Greenshaw was again trying to tell his story of the soldier who couldn’t understand metempsychosis.

  The story was involved. It depended on a train of events, and Mr Greenshaw could not remember the order of events. His difficulty was aggravated, moreover, by his deference to a convention of realism and his effort to tell the story in a Cockney accent. The soldier died — there was no doubt about that — and a vulture picked his bones. Then the vulture died, and fertilized a yard of desert from which a tuft of daisies sprang. And along came a tall gaunt camel to crop the daisies — but was that the order of events, or should the camel come before the vulture? Mr Greenshaw was determined to get the story right, and Hugh Burnett and Tom Murdoch showed considerable patience. But they were visibly relieved when Mr Warrant interrupted the narrative.

  He, having read the poems, handed The Merry Muses to Tom Murdoch. ‘The interesting thing about Burns,’ he said, ‘is his metrical control. I’ve never been much impressed by what he says, but the way he says it is consistently pleasing. Tell me what you think of these.’

  Forsaking Mr Greenshaw, Tom Murdoch and Hugh Burnett sat down together, on a sofa, and almost immediately began to laugh with loud and rude approval of the bawdy pages. Disturbed by this unusual noise, a tall, lean, moon-pale figure in the farthest part of the room rose from his chair and slowly walked towards the door. He was half-way there when Max hailed him boisterously, and said, ‘Come and have a drink with us. We’re just going to have some brandy, and there’s no one in Scotland who deserves it more than you do. I bought that picture, and it’s a masterpiece. Let me introduce Hector Macrae and my son-in-law Simon Telfer: Lord Ochiltree.’

  ‘How do you do,’ said the judge in his thin, dry, uninterested voice. ‘I’m glad you bought it, Arbuthnot. I think it’s a good picture, if you didn’t pay too much for it. But I won’t have a drink, though I thank you for the offer. I promised my wife to keep early hours when I came here. She’s gone into a nursing-home, poor soul — though there’s nothing wrong with her — and I’m living here en garçon. But, alas, I mustn’t drink, or I’ll be tempted to stay up too late.’

  He smiled, like the wrinkling of an ancient parchment, and went out. A waiter held the door open for him, and then came to Max and said, ‘You’re wanted on the telephone, sir.’

  ‘Damnation!’ said Max, and went downstairs.

  ‘Well?’ he asked. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Max, darling

  ‘How did you know I was here?’

  ‘I have my sources of information.— But joking apart, darling, when am I going to see you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I want to see you. So badly.’

  ‘And I’ve no intention of exchanging another word with you unless you give up your silly pretence that I’ve been making promises to you. Promises, by God! I don’t make promises lightly.’

  ‘You must learn to take a joke, darling. I was only making a joke when I said that.’

  ‘It didn’t sound like a joke.’

  ‘I swear it was!’

  ‘Well, don’t try it on again.’

  ‘What are you doing to-morrow?’

  ‘Playing golf at Muirfield. But I may not want to play a full round.’

  ‘Then let’s have lunch together. At North Berwick?’

  ‘I expect I’ll be late.’

  ‘I’ll wait for ever — for ever and ever at the Marine Hotel.’

  ‘And you won’t talk about promises?’

  ‘No promises — except that I’ll wait for you.’

  Now that, he thought, as he came out of the telephone-box, is a very sensible arrangement. I’ve made my position clear, and she accepts it. She’s a splendid girl, she’s a glorious girl, and I’m very fond of her so long as she doesn’t make ridiculous claims. But I think I’ve taught her a lesson. I think she’s beginning to see reason. And so long as she doesn’t talk too much, what a lovely girl she is! By God, I’m a lucky man!

  He stood in the hall, contemplating his good fortune, and into that happy picture came the tall, pale spectral figure of Paula’s father, Lord Ochiltree: that melancholy, dry old man who would not drink a glass of brandy — though clearly he wanted to — because he had promised his stick of a wife, a notorious hypochondriac, to go to bed at eleven o’clock.

  It was only three minutes past eleven, and into Max’s lively mind darted the kindly idea of rescuing the lonely judge from his comfortless and early bed. He would, as yet, hardly have started to undress — and what a debt of gratitude he owed him! It was the old judge who had told him where to find his Landseer, and Max, with a sudden decision, resolved to save him from dull solitude. He might have to put on his coat again — put in his teeth perhaps — but then he would have an hour of good company, good talk, and as much brandy as he wanted.

  Max walked across the hall towards the lift, and rang the bell to bring it down. He did not, at first, see that the lift was already on the ground floor, nor did he observe a notice that read: Out of Order.

  The Edinburgh epidemic —the Dionysiac frenzy —had been resisted, in the club, by the loyalty of old servants, but even their devoted allegiance had not been enough to prevent occasional inconvenience; and one of the most annoying mishaps was the failure of the lift. It was a very old lift, a sort of bird-cage that travelled nakedly, and very slowly, in an open shaft, and every few weeks it fell out of order. Its replacement by a newer sort was always on the next year’s budget, and always postponed. And now when it had failed, after six weeks of tolerable efficiency, the electricians who normally repaired it would not bother to come and put it into working order again. They had other things to do. Things more agreeable than tinkering with machinery.

  Max failed to see the notice, Out of Order, but after a few minutes he did discover that the lift was on the ground floor, and opening the door he stepped inside. He closed the door, and pressed the button that usually made it ascend. It started, with a jumping, uneasy movement — now grindingly slow, now soaring like a balloon —and in the semi-darkness between the first floor and the bedroom floor above, it stopped.

  On the primitive instrument-panel in the cage there were several buttons marked STOP, Ground Floor, First Floor, Emergency, and so on; and Max pressed each in turn, but without result. He was caught and held in a limbo between floors, and since his early years he had suffered from a mild claustrophobia: the consequence, perhaps, of his emotional experience in a broom cupboard. Angrily at first, but then nervously, he pressed the useless buttons, and thumped them with his fist. Raging against imprisonment, he seized and shook the bars of his cage.

  His guests, Tom Murdoch and Hugh Burnett, were still laughing happily over Burns’s skilful improprieties, and Hector was talking to Simon Telfer. Mr Greenshaw was now trying to interest Mr Warrant and Mr Belford in his tale of metempsychosis. He had decided that the vulture must enter the
narrative before the camel, and remembered that the soldier’s name was Private Thomas. This gave him confidence, but Mr Warrant and Mr Belford were a poor audience — they lacked response — and before Mr Greenshaw had got into mid-channel with his story they were all surprised by a strange and alarming noise.

  Max had begun to shout for help. He had a deep and powerful voice, that was magnified and distorted in his hollow prison, and the whole building shuddered with what sounded like the enormous pain of a wounded buffalo. ‘Help, help!’ he bellowed, and the words resounded from the walls as if they were beating on the skin of a great drum.

  His guests went hurrying out, and from all quarters of the club came others, quick with consternation, to find the source of a noise so terrible and piteous. There were still a few members in the building — a party in the card-room, a couple in the billiards room, two or three sleeping in the library, and a nobleman of ancient lineage and primitive habits who always went to bed at nine — and as well as these there was the night porter, who had just come on duty, there were three or four waiters, and a cluster of maids who had been gossiping over teacups in the kitchen.

  Beyond the first floor the stairs had none of the grandeur that distinguished their lower flight. They were drab and narrow, designed for service not for show, and they rose and turned about the open lift shaft. It was on this crowded and uncomfortable stage that a fairly numerous company gathered, and became aware of Max’s predicament. For some little while after they arrived he went on shouting, and the maids with goggling eyes all pressed their hands to their ears to keep out such an horrendous noise.

  Only his legs were visible, but his voice was unmistakable. All who were there knew who the prisoner was, and his guests shouted from the stairs to encourage him. When Max heard them, through the clamour of his own demands, he knelt down, crouching low on the floor of the lift, and pressing his face to the bars, cried furiously, ‘Get me out of this infernal cage! Do something, can’t you? Do you think I want to stay here all night?’

  Mr Belford took charge. Mr Belford had been a member of the club for thirty years, and served on the committee. He told Max to be patient, and addressed the night porter. ‘Who is here,’ he asked, ‘who knows how this thing works?’

  ‘It doesn’t work,’ said the porter.

  ‘I know that, but it must be made to!’

  ‘We’ve been waiting for the electricians all week … ’

  ‘But surely there’s someone who understands it?’

  ‘What about Willy?’ said one of the maids.

  ‘Who is Willy?’

  Willy, it appeared, was the boiler-man, and after a good deal of whispering and giggling it transpired that Willy had lately been seen in the lane behind the club with a girl who worked in the kitchen.

  ‘Well, go and find him,’ said Mr Belford. ‘Tell him what’s happened, and make him realize that he’s got to do something about it. And be quick!’

  Again he spoke calmly and sensibly to Max, and advocated patience. But Max replied in a hollow voice, ‘I’m not feeling well— cooped-up in this damned cage — I’m feeling ill. Get me a drink. Whisky and soda.’

  A waiter ran to do his bidding, and was back in a minute with a tall tumbler.

  Breathing heavily, Max lay on the floor of the lift, and thrusting an arm through the bars, stretched out beseeching fingers. Mr Belford took the glass from the waiter, and tiptoe on the nearest stair reached high, and gave it to him. ‘Another,’ said Max. ‘Better bring another. I may be here for a long time.’

  He sat in a corner of the lift, and drank his whisky and soda. The people on the stairs stood watching him — as much as they could see of him — in a fascinated silence. No one left the scene, but even his own friends could think of nothing to say. They waited and watched, quiet and expectant. No one laughed when the waiter brought him another drink, and with it a plate of sandwiches. Only Max — in a cage and being fed— was suspicious of the waiter’s motive. He refused the sandwiches.

  Then, after a quarter of an hour, they heard that Willy had been found, and a few minutes later Max was told to press the Ground Floor button and prepare for a rough landing. The spectators on the stairs went down to watch his arrival.

  The lift came down, bumping badly, but stopped at floor-level, and Mr Belford opened the gate.

  Max stepped out and gave the waiter two empty glasses. ‘I didn’t spill a drop,’ he said.

  They laughed at his gallant recovery, but there was a general feeling that the party had come to an end. Max himself was unwilling to admit this, but the broken lift seemed a deterrent to their going upstairs again. It stood there, gaping and inert, like a symbol denying them freedom of movement: at any rate, of easy movement.

  Then Max had a happy idea. ‘Come out to Corstorphine and have a last drink there,’ he said. ‘My car’s here, or should be … ’

  ‘I have mine,’ said Tom Murdoch.

  ‘Don’t include me,’ said Mr Belford.

  ‘Nor me,’ said Mr Warrant.

  But the others accepted the invitation, and Willy was sent for, to be thanked and rewarded for his rescue work. They put on hats and coats, and were about to go when Max said, ‘Where’s the book?’

  ‘Here,’ said Hugh Burnett. ‘I’ve been looking after it.’

  ‘Can’t afford to lose this,’ said Max as he took it, and went out to be received by Thomson and the waiting Daimler. He sat beside Thomson, and almost immediately fell asleep. Simon Telfer and Mr Greenshaw were in the back seat, and Hector went with Hugh Burnett and Tom Murdoch.

  But the attempt to continue the party was a failure. Mrs Arbuthnot and Jane had gone to bed, and though there were drinks and sandwiches waiting for them, no one had any appetite. A trickle of conversation died into a sandy waste of silence, and for ten or fifteen minutes they sat dully in their deep chairs, some faintly snoring and others bemused on the borderland of sleep. The Edwardian dinner had been too much for them.

  Then Mr Greenshaw woke, and in a slow, confident voice and what he imagined to be a Cockney accent, declared, ‘So there you are, Private Thomas, a little pale brown ‘eap on the stony surface of the desert — and you ain’t changed much, ‘ave you, Thomas?’

  He had at last finished his story, but no one knew what he was talking about. He had, however, roused the others to a consciousness that they must go home, and leaving their last drinks untouched they thanked their generous host, and went out into a soaring darkness pricked with stars. Tom Murdoch, driving very slowly, took Hector and Mr Greenshaw home.

  X

  On Sunday morning, a little before nine o’clock, Hector woke in the assured conviction that the time had come for him to commit suicide.

  For some years the temptation had been recurrent, and a couple of weeks ago it had seemed imperative. But he had written to Jane, and Jane had replied; not in writing, but in person. For a moment in time Jane had stood in the doorway that opened before him, and shut out the view; but he had sent Jane away, and the door was open again.

  He was not afraid of what he saw. He felt, indeed, no emotion except a sense of relief. His decision to die — formed, presumably, in his unconscious mind while he was sleeping — delivered him from the absurd and countless difficulties of a life in which he had no interest. Why swim, he thought, when swimming is such enormous, so senseless a labour, and it is easy to drown?

  He got up and put on a dressing-gown. He washed, and brushed his teeth. He cooked a hearty breakfast and ate it with a good appetite. Then he thought it would be useful — it would show consideration for others — if he reduced to a semblance of order the deep and wide chaos of his writing-table. Not only of his writing-table. On the chimney-piece and on smaller tables — in his bedroom as in the sitting-room — there was a sprawling confusion of unopened or unanswered letters, of unpaid bills in their drab envelopes and receipts as dismally covered, of newspapers and magazines that had never been unwrapped; invitations to lecture, and long official-looking envelop
es from his literary agent or his accountants that might contain a new contract or a cold request for a list of his professional expenses to be presented in offset of his income-tax. How did he know what his expenses were? What nonsense it all was! All those little envelopes, inscribed On Her Majesty’s Service, they, if they were opened, would disclose impatient demands for another preposterous contribution to benign democracy. More nonsense — and how thankful he was to be done with it!

  But with a courtesy and benevolence that the near prospect of death and his freedom from the world had released in him, he began to put his papers in order, the bills here — he had three or four hundred pounds in the bank, and no one would suffer from his death — and the invitations to lecture on the modern novel and the Scottish literary renaissance in a waste-paper basket. The income-tax demands he tore into small pieces, for he remembered, in the past, having given lavishly to national funds, and he doubted if his contributions had done anything but add to the inflation of money which year by year reduced their value. The more he gave the less it was worth; or so he felt. But the letters he had neglected — the letters from kindly strangers to whom he had not troubled to reply; letters from hopeful young men who wanted to be writers but couldn’t think what to write about — these he threw away with remorse, and wished that he had saved from the waste of time a few hours in which to answer them. Sadly he regretted his lack of civility — for though his correspondents were strangers in name, they were brothers in misfortune — but happily he tossed away the many envelopes that enclosed advertisements, prospectuses, and invitations to buy American magazines at specially reduced prices.

  He had gathered together the long envelopes, from his accountants or his literary agent or his bank, when the telephone rang, and Max Arbuthnot’s voice demanded ‘Have you got the book?’

  Stupidly he repeated, ‘The book?’

  ‘I didn’t leave it in the club, I’ve established that, but I’ve lost it, and I wondered if you had it.’