‘Good lord, no. And no more are you, surely.’
Holme smiled a beautiful if rather too tender smile. ‘I’m certainly not. But you see at this party I’m always expected to get something up.’
‘Who expects you?’
By this question Peter Holme was much struck. ‘I don’t know that I’ve ever thought. It’s something that’s happened every year for years. I don’t know who was at the bottom of it originally. Wedge, I expect. That man’s at the bottom of darn near everything. We get up a bit of burlesque rot about the Spider – just to please old Eliot.’
‘Does it please him?’
Holme looked positively startled. ‘This’, he said, ‘is what is meant, no doubt, by bringing in new blood. And I don’t know that I’ve ever met an archaeologist before. Come and have a drink.’
They edged through the crush and turning down a corridor found themselves in a deserted billiard-room amply decantered and cigared. ‘I say’, said Holme, ‘what awful luck. We can have a game. Nearly always there’s somebody messing about.’ He sent a ball up the table and brought it to rest dead on the cushion beside him. ‘I don’t know that it does. Please Eliot, I mean. I’m sure it used to. But of recent years – It looks as if I’d better give you fifty.’
‘You better had. It’s pretty understandable, isn’t it, that he should be a bit tired of the whole thing?’ Winter fumbled ineptly with his cue. ‘Imagine a sensitized sausage-machine. Isn’t that our host? Superb sausage in February, magnificent sausage in October, and a steady demand for gem-like little sausages in between – rather a grind.’
‘Well, for that matter what about me?’
‘The truth about you’, said Winter with rapid candour, ‘is that all roads lead to Holme. But you can play billiards. Better than you can play – ’
His opponent missed a shot and sighed. ‘People are so often rude. But archaeologists seem to get particularly quickly off the mark. Have you ever seen me?’
‘Lord, yes. Once a week at the Oxford Repertory. Do you remember The Lady from the Sea? And Uncle Vanya?’
Holme sighed more heavily and achieved a stroke of great subtlety. ‘Those’, he said – and he could scarcely, Winter judged, be more than twenty-six – ‘were the days. But for years now I’ve been dogged by this damned Spider. Eliot, after all, flits from fable to fable. And they’re not exactly sausages; he does have the knack of finding something new from time to time. I’m liable to be put under the wire by one fable for three hundred nights and matinées twice a week. I took The Trapdoor to Capetown, Jo’burg, Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, a huddle of places in New Zealand, and Brisbane. Have you ever been to Brisbane?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘It’s hot. Do you know The Trapdoor? That knack of finding something new. It’s set in Antarctica. The trapdoor leads down to a sort of hut cut out of the ice where some chaps are struggling to live through the long polar night. I wore the appropriate outfit, worked out for me by real explorers. I hate the Spider. I wish he were dead. I wish he would kill him.’
Winter shook his head. ‘No good. Conan Doyle almost certainly killed his Sherlock. But he bobbed up again – if I remember aright out of a crevasse. And Mrs Moule would decidedly have no difficulty with a dead Spider. She would reincarnate him before you could wink.’
‘I’ve won. I think we’ll play five hundred up. I think’ – Holme looked cautiously about the empty room – ‘he may kill him. Seriously.’
‘Will you put a fiver on it?’
Holme looked startled. ‘On his killing the beast?’
‘On the five hundred up.’
‘I’ll say I will.’
For ten minutes they played billiards with Holme mostly sitting by the wall. ‘You unspeakable cad,’ he said. ‘You won’t really make me pay?’
‘I’ll say I will… What do you mean you think he may kill him?’
Once more Holme looked cautiously round. ‘You haven’t heard?’
‘Indeed I’ve heard, but in a murmuring sort of way. Perhaps you can give me a coherent account.’ Winter continued to score monotonously.
‘I doubt if you deserve it. But I’ll try. You see–’
At this moment the door opened and Timmy and Belinda came in.
‘Holme’, said Winter deliberately – for he was determined not to be sidetracked again, ‘thinks that your father may kill the Spider off.’
Belinda came quickly forward. ‘You mean sort of retire?’
Holme, illegally sprawled upon the table, nodded. ‘And concentrate on the pigs. Go out of the policeman business altogether. His helmet now shall be a hive for bees.’
‘Not a chance,’ said Belinda crisply. ‘Think of Wedge.’
‘And André and Mrs Moule and all the Americans,’ said Timmy. He strolled over to a window and began to whistle softly – to whistle something that stirred obscurely in Winter’s mind.
‘And’, said Holme, ‘the managers and the film people; you come to big business there. But as I was going to tell Winter–’
‘Stop!’ Belinda was standing suddenly rigid by the fireplace. ‘Timmy, can’t you hear?’
Timmy’s whistling stopped – and as it stopped Winter recognized the melody. It was the same that had been so consideringly repeated by the girl who had collected him from Laslett’s barn. With the others he strained his ears. Timmy must have picked up the music unconsciously from the air. For faintly as if from some remote quarter of the house the little neurasthenic phrases were floating down to them…floating down, fading away. Winter recognized the instrument on its last audible note. It was a clarinet.
‘The Spider and his leitmotiv,’ said Holme softly. ‘It’s the first time I’ve heard them.’
Belinda was still standing quite still. Timmy had turned from the window and was making for the door. ‘I’ll rip this house to pieces’, he cried furiously, ‘if I don’t–’ The door opened before he reached it. He fell back in exasperated resignation. ‘André,’ he said. ‘Lord, lord, lord.’
It was the little man with the abundant beard. ‘Peter!’ he cried, ‘I have an idea.’
‘My dear André, that sort of thing is not your line.’
André laughed delightedly. If he had heard the spectral music of seconds before he gave no sign. ‘And it will be such fun! Better than last year; better than the year before–’
‘Lord,’ said Timmy, ‘lord, lord, lord.’
‘And better than the year before that.’ André helped himself to whisky. ‘At three o’clock’, he said, ‘how much one begins to long for tea. My idea’ he hesitated before a box of particularly large cigars – ‘derives from Pirandello. The curtain goes up, the play goes forward until – lo and behold! – the audience realizes that what they are watching is not exactly a play but a play within a play. My idea is that we might exploit along those lines this funny business they’re all talking about. These jokes. By the way, I suppose they are jokes?’ He paused fleetingly and glanced at his companions. ‘Not so much a play within a play as a Spider within a Spider. As I say, if we could think something out there would be no end of fun in it. Just the thing to please your father no end.’ He smiled at them: innocently, maliciously – impossible to say. ‘Think it over.’ He gulped his whisky and was gone.
There was an awkward pause. ‘I think’, said Winter dubiously, ‘it was Puccini. Does it happen often?’
Timmy had gone back to the window. ‘The music? I gather it’s a rare and choice effect. The cream of the joke.’ He turned round and faced them. ‘Life’s becoming not worth living. The Spider making his ghostly music off, and André making his bestial proposals on. Whatever will poor Hugo think?’
Belinda’s equanimity appeared to be equally disturbed. ‘Why’, she cried at a tangent, ‘you should bring down that awful boyfriend just because I ask–’ She stopped, no doubt feeling very properly that this was a strictly family affair.
‘By the way’, said Winter hastily, ‘there’s something I was g
oing to ask: Timmy’s mentioning Benton put it in my head. The girl who collected us from the station – I’ve forgotten her name–’
‘Patricia Appleby,’ said Belinda.
‘I think she said you had a job together. And she murmured very mysteriously about Benton and an old person called Mummery and myself – something about sending us telegrams.’
‘Why,’ said Belinda, ‘that’s a little joke of Shoon’s.’
‘Jasper Shoon the collector?’
‘Yes. Patricia and I work for him. I run the books and she runs the manuscripts. And as I say, Jasper is having a little joke. He had asked your Bussenschutt down for the weekend to a sort of private view of some particularly choice manuscript–’
‘Papyrus.’
‘No doubt. And as soon as he got Bussenschutt he wired invitations to several other people. He believes in what he calls stimulating academic rivalry. I expect your invitation will follow you here.’
‘This’, said Timmy, who had opened a cigar box which proved to be a cache of milk chocolate, ‘is beside the point at issue.’
Peter Holme, who had been silent for some time, flung down his cue on a settee. ‘The point at issue is decided. You don’t any of you seem to have noticed, but I’ve made a break of eighty-seven and won after all. Puccini doesn’t seem to disturb me.’
They stared at him incredulously. ‘It’s a blatant lie,’ said Timmy. ‘Your wretched contest recks of dishonesty from start to finish. And now let’s play one of those games with ever so many balls.’ He rummaged in a cupboard.
Winter crossed to the window. It was mid-afternoon and in the sky watery light was already fading among clouds which were coming to anchor for the night. The wind had dropped. The rain, which had been driving in diagonal washes giving movement to the landscape, was now falling perpendicularly on a country which, although actually undulating, appeared to stretch out in flat, sullenly resistant lines. The immediate prospect was a balustraded terrace, its nearer corner embellished with a pedestal on which stood a small marble bull. The creature showed even in the uncertain light as a work of craft and beauty but someone had tied an open umbrella to one of its horns and it thus stood in mute indignity, dry-headed, and with the rain streaming down its slim hind quarters. The landscape, the witticism, and the horrid little tune which yet seemed to linger in the air were alike depressing; Winter turned back to find the billiard-table under a flood of soft clear light. A voice was saying, ‘Then I’ll mark for you.’ It was Patricia Appleby’s.
There had been some hitch about the game with ever so many balls and they played billiards again instead, their attention centred for a while on the slightly hypnoidal green cloth. Patricia, from the semi-darkness beyond, occasionally called the score; Timmy, when not in play, contrived to retreat always to the other side of the room; at one point Patricia found his chocolate and he was furious at the resulting amusement. The two games, billiards and that immemorial one of which Belinda appeared to be the promoter, went forward together. A typical winter afternoon, thought Winter, among the substantial classes of England – with the children growing up, papa looking at bills in the library, tea-things beginning to chink near by, and a sizable dinner already on the march in the kitchens. Only here the bills and the dinner were all mixed up with a mob of people drifting about the house.
‘He could retire’, said Belinda, who had the trick of catching at a train of thought, ‘if he wanted to. Mr Winter, I’m afraid you are up to the neck in the family complexes. We’re glad. But do you mind?’
‘Not at all,’ said Winter uncomfortably and inadequately. Nature had not cast him, he felt, for the role of family friend.
‘Timmy will certainly have told you of the foolish and laborious business of Mrs Birdwire. It would attract him.’
‘It attracts Winter,’ said Timmy.
‘It does strike me’, explained Winter apologetically, ‘as having its funny side. Annoying, of course.’
‘She’s a most objectionable woman’ – Belinda was uncompromisingly severe – ‘and the thing was a most frightfully humiliating let-down. The funny business about the vicar and the little schoolteacher wasn’t half so bad. They are more or less reasonable beings and after a bit we got them to sit in on it and see it from our point of view. But the Birdwire! And now André wants to make a sort of charade of it. For of course it’s the loud and silly jokes that catch his fancy; not the quiet and deadly ones.’ Belinda, stabbing low at her ball, nearly cut the cloth.
‘If there have been quiet and deadly jokes’, said Winter, ‘I really would like to hear about them soberly. I think they would interest me more than the others. That music interests me. It sounds – dangerous. The Birdwire affair hurt nobody.’
‘Daddy dictates.’ Belinda had plunged abruptly. ‘He dictates, the stuff is typed and brought to him, he scribbles over it, it is retyped and he reads it through. And that’s generally the end of it, although he strikes patches where several revisions are required. Everything is kept in an enormous cupboard, unlocked, in the secretary’s room. A long shelf for each of the current novels, another for short stories, and another – a bit dusty – for Pope. All these things, I say, live snug in that cupboard or did until a few weeks ago. Then they began stirring gently in the darkness.’
Impossible, thought Winter, for any Eliot to resist an alluring metaphor. Parent and children, they went out to meet the dramatic halfway. ‘Stirring?’ he said mildly.
‘Somebody began slipping out sheets from the fair copies and substituting slightly different versions of his own.’
‘His or her own,’ said Timmy. ‘There’s a perfectly open field.’
‘If we must be meticulous’ – it was the voice of Patricia – ‘we had better notice that Belinda has already got away from the facts and is giving a rationalistic interpretation of them; I suppose’ – the voice hesitated for a moment – ‘the only rationalistic interpretation possible. But all we really have is Mr Eliot’s and the secretary’s assertion that what came out of the cupboard wasn’t quite the same as what went in. If you think there are no other sorts of interpretation – well, ask Mrs Moule.’
‘As a matter of fact and more or less – I have.’ Winter, missing a cannon, peered into the darkness. Miss Appleby interested him.
‘I’m afraid’, said Belinda, ‘that I’m wholly rational. And so’ – the significant irrelevance seemed to slip from her – ‘is daddy, really.’
‘Or ought to be’, Holme interjected, ‘if he’s an admirer of that chap Pope. I like his verse. But it had no mystic twilight at all.’
‘Let me get on. Somebody started monkeying with the typescripts in the cupboard, ever so cautiously at first. Which suggests, when you think it out, what was being aimed at. Not just a jape or a brief nuisance but something – well, undermining. If the unknown had suddenly slipped in some considerable perversion of what daddy was writing, the thing would have declared itself as a practical joke at once. But it was so done that for a long time daddy didn’t realize. If you actually come to grips with the business’ – Belinda looked at Winter – ‘you will think us an incredibly vague lot. Things happen – like these noises off; they worry people; but nobody really sets about putting a check on them. I don’t if you’ve noticed, but my father is as vague as vague can be.’
‘In patches,’ said Patricia’s voice.
‘Perhaps so. Certainly he’s vague about his writing; it’s important to get that. It’s important to get this whole attitude to his writing. You’ll have gathered that it’s a slightly uncomfortable attitude. He isn’t ashamed of the Spider; indeed, he’s really uncommonly proud of him. Have a good look at daddy, his taste and his tempo, and you’ll see that the thing is an odd and unique achievement.’
‘You will also wonder’, said the voice, ‘where the Spider comes from.’
‘From hiding-places ten years deep,’ murmured Holme. His mind seemed to be running on the English poets.
‘But the point’, Belinda went o
n, ‘is how he writes. The stuff is wholly divorced from the waking world, and while he’s at it I doubt if he can be called awake himself. But when he revises he’s quite awake; that’s where the critical control comes in. And in that lies the basis of these operations by the unknown. Daddy read his fair copies and was surprised by an unexpected turn here and there; a forgotten turn, he would have thought it. It was only gradually that he got a sense of – of something happening. For a time he kept mum. It was because he kept mum, I think, that the thing took – well, a somewhat oblique turn in his mind. Because of that and – somehow – Herbert Chown. And now Chown’s here again. If Timmy can bring a rank nuisance to Rust he will.’
Timmy giggled nervously. Winter, who felt the unwitting shaft, stepped back abruptly into the half-darkness and tripped over an unseen obstacle. He grabbed and found himself clutching a pair of unnaturally long human legs which were sprawled outwards from a settee. There was a moment of confusion and somebody snapped on lights.
‘Why,’ cried Belinda in evident relief, ‘it’s only Rupert!’
‘Nothing but that,’ agreed a dry voice. ‘Please carry on.’
‘Or rather,’ said the lanky man called Rupert, ‘don’t carry on but listen to me. Long experience of this household tells me that you have been talking about it and about, and probably without all the facts. Incidentally there is a new fact. While you have been talking something has happened.’
‘If you mean’, said Timmy, ‘another exhibition on the clarinet–’
‘I don’t.’
Holme climbed off the table, Timmy thrust his cue in the rack. Winter looked curiously at this latest of the Eliots to appear. A man of about Mr Eliot’s age, Rupert contrived to look considerably older. His unusual height and reach, which an erect carriage would have established as a presence, had gone to seed in something between a lounge and a shamble; belying his air of brisk competence in the present was an eye which seemed to hold too much commerce with the past – not the impersonal and liberating past of the scholar, nor the scientist’s sobering past in geological time, but that little past of the man, thronged with deprivation and missed chances, which devours that which feeds upon it. The gentleman who ironically agreed that he was nothing but Rupert was – it came to Winter with unacademic penetration – of the species of professional failures; once upon a time his sort had been kept safely in Canada on two pounds a week.
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