Stop Press

by Michael Innes

  Winter nodded absently. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s true enough.’

  It was the Spider one had in one’s head, not Mr Eliot. And, without a personal acquaintance, Mr Eliot was something of which one could never build up even the outline. His surroundings one could guess at. Winter, from his academic seclusion, had possessed a hazy but approximately accurate notion of the environment of popular authorship. Wedge, Mrs Moule, and the little man called André he could have imagined; even Kermode failed really to surprise him; the unknown and disconcerting factor lay in Mr Eliot himself, the complex and disturbed little man who was the hub of the whole system. Winter had pictured him dimly as a pertinacious and talented scribbler, inhabiting a world wholly remote from his own. A little reflection on Timmy, he now told himself, might have afforded him some key to the truth; as it was, the truth was mildly disconcerting. Such – he thought, turning round upon himself – is the power of academico-social snobbism. It was a matter of that nose again; Mr Eliot’s smell had turned out to be less remote than expected, and one result among others was a somewhat increased sympathy in the odd misfortune that had befallen him.

  ‘And now’, said Mrs Moule – who had established a clear protectorate – ‘I am going to take you round and introduce you to all sorts of interesting people. But at dinner I hope we shall be sitting together again. We shall have much in common. My brother, who is also an Oxford man, is now Bishop of Udonga.’

  Winter murmured cordially, and let the murmur conceal a sigh. As a boy he had wanted to be a pirate; as a man he had discovered the single need to uncover and recover the past – clarorum virorum facta moresque posteris tradere. But to Mrs Moule he and the Bishop of Udonga were one. ‘I hope’, he said, ‘that you will begin by leading me to Kermode; I feel that he will enlarge my knowledge of human nature at once.’

  ‘Then’, said Mrs Moule, ‘come along.’ She began to edge her way through the crush with that judicious mean between physical assertiveness and social observance which such situations require. Kermode was not in great demand; the fat lady had disengaged herself from his growls; somebody had taken the sherry decanter away from him and he was pacing up and down in a hungry way between two large chairs. The effect was quite alarmingly leonine and Mrs Moule grasped the essence of the situation at once. ‘Take this,’ she said in a whisper, and thrust into Winter’s hands a plate of some species of naked shellfish, each transfixed by a small wooden harpoon. Winter, who was old enough to deplore the spilling-over of hors-d’oeuvres into the drawing-room and to associate the harpoons with toothpicks, took the plate dubiously. ‘Mr Kermode,’ said Mrs Moule, ‘this is Mr Winter: Gerald Winter – Adrian Kermode.’ She stood back, evidently pleased with this nice form of words; Winter murmured politely and thrust forward his offering. Kermode growled softly – a muted effect which might be put down as gratification – and then with a single massive movement briefly shook hands and secured a little bunch of the harpoons.

  ‘Personally’, said Kermode, ‘I like my bite of dinner at seven o’ clock.’

  Mrs Moule frowned, perhaps reflecting that if Mr Eliot’s successor had written this sentence in a school exercise-book she would have had to blue-pencil it. A moment later some acquaintance claimed her from behind and Winter and the aspiring ghost were left in single communion. ‘Don’t let it go,’ directed Kermode; ‘they seem deuced short. Just put it down here.’

  Winter just put it down there. ‘You seem uncommonly hungry,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Been taking a little physical exercise? Difficult on an afternoon like this.’

  Kermode looked startled; for a second his hand even suspended itself on a further journey to the plate. ‘Wise guy – hey?’ said Kermode, and rapidly swallowing shellfish he made the gesture conventionally known as thrusting out an aggressive jaw. ‘You can take it you’ve got nothing on me.’ He seemed to search briefly in his mind for some means of emphasizing his remarks. ‘No, sir,’ he added. His jaw resumed a position suitable for engorging molluscs.

  It was to be conjectured that Kermode’s studies were at present in the armoured-car and machine-gun phase of the Spider’s development, when a transatlantic influence had been at its strongest. And that was a long time ago. Winter shook his head judicially. ‘If I may say so, you’re a good bit out of date. Things don’t stay put. Read Mencken. The argot renews itself subtly year by year.’

  Kermode was startled anew; he frowned at Winter with sullen and ferocious intelligence. But when he spoke his voice had become plaintive. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘how can I be expected to keep up with that sort of thing? They won’t give me enough money to travel, and I never was much of a reading man. Do you know’ – he had again possessed himself of a decanter – ‘that sometimes I drink too much? You mayn’t believe me, but it’s quite true.’

  ‘I assure you I don’t at all disbelieve you.’

  Kermode, releasing a shower of stripped harpoons, brought down a hand with great violence on Winter’s shoulder. ‘That’s a pal,’ he said; ‘that’s a real pal.’ With an impulse of generosity he looked about him for a second glass.

  ‘You know,’ said Kermode, swallowing a glass of sherry and seeming to skip in the process several stages in a maturing friendship with Winter, ‘it’s galling. That’s the only word, Jerry old chap: galling.’

  ‘Gerald,’ corrected Winter without unkindness. For the moment he was mildly enchanted with Kermode, deriving from him the impression that for weeks all his dealing had been with basically the same person and that here was something different – an illusion always pleasant while it lasts. ‘I’m sure it is’, he added sympathetically, ‘very galling indeed.’

  ‘The bread of idleness,’ said Kermode. He spoke now with positive affection, but that this sentiment was sharply confined to Winter was proved by his turning with the most blood-chilling growl upon someone who had endeavoured to interrupt them. ‘The bread of idleness,’ he repeated; ‘you cast it on the water and never see it again.’ He considered this maxim doubtfully for a moment. ‘Shakespeare’, he said, ‘knew all about it; I often say that Shakespeare was the best of the lot of us. You remember his vagabond lag?’

  ‘Vagabond flag, surely.’

  Kermode shook his head decisively. ‘You’re thinking of another place; there’s the deuce of a lot of Shakespeare. Like to a vagabond lag upon the stream, Goes to and back lackeying the varying tide, To rot itself with motion. Marking time, you know. And that’s me.’

  ‘Surely it’s not essential to do nothing but mark time? Couldn’t you be doing something on your own meanwhile?’

  The ghost looked so suspicious that it seemed likely that the bread of idleness was not so wholly unpalatable to him as he suggested. ‘Believe me, old man,’ he said, ‘it’s not so easy as that. Here I have to be, waiting always on the touchline so to speak, and it’s distracting – deuced distracting. Of course I lend a hand in various ways from time to time. There’s a lot of work, you know, in an affair like the Spider.’

  ‘So I suppose. By the way, are you interested in Pope?’

  ‘I’ve never played it. Oh, I see what you mean: Pope. No; distinctly no. As I say, I’ve never been much of a reading man. Shakespeare, yes. This Pope, not.’ Kermode set down his glass and stared at Winter with unexpected but convincing sagacity, like one of Landseer’s lions in Trafalgar Square. ‘My Spider’s going to be different.’

  ‘I’m sure it is.’ Winter’s agreement was convinced. ‘But is that the idea?’

  ‘Of course it is. Why has the creature had the weird success it has? Because old Eliot can throw in a pinch of culture-stuff? No, sir. Simply because friend Spider has developed and people have got to taking an interest in how he’s going on like they do with growing kids. And how is he going to develop when Eliot checks out? – that’s the question that’s been getting Wedge. And it’s why Wedge has got me. Wedge and I play games together and he knows my layout.’

  Winter fleetingly wondered whether among the games which Wedge and Kermode
played together was that of pretending to be somebody else. Between Kermode as he presented himself and the important office for which the astute Wedge had chosen him there seemed to be distinct discrepancy. But this again perhaps was the inexperience of the cloistered academe. Winter endeavoured to look more searchingly at his companion. The man was indeed a sort of jungle monarch, but of the travelling-menagerie sort – his fearsomeness adulterated by a dash of pathos and by incipient signs of the mange. All this was too complicated to be a disguise. Nevertheless one could believe that there was an element of dissimulation in Kermode. Prompted to explore further, Winter said encouragingly, ‘You were remarking that your Spider is going to be different? You are going to develop him further?’

  Kermode gripped him confidentially by the elbow. ‘Wedge’s idea is that I should undevelop him. And he thinks I have abilities that way.’

  ‘You mean that the Spider should fall back on his old nefarious courses?’ Despite himself, Winter was mildly shocked by this scheme of ink-and-paper debauchment. During the few thousand years that we have had them our moral notions have bitten surprisingly deep; and to regenerate even a puppet merely to deprave him again is a proposal which will disturb a well-regulated mind. Winter looked at Kermode almost in dismay.

  Kermode nodded. ‘That’s Wedge,’ he said. ‘And I wouldn’t maintain that it isn’t smart. The more you look at the run of the books’ – he made a gesture which deftly called the thirty-seven volumes into being – ‘the more you see in it. Nevertheless Wedge has his limitations. After all, he isn’t a writing man. And I have my own ideas.’ Suddenly he growled, this time at Winter indifferently with the rest of the world. ‘As you’re going to see.’ He picked up his glass and viewed its emptiness distastefully; then, surprisingly, he thrust it into his mouth and bit it off short by the stem; a moment later it began to emerge slowly and like a maniac bubble from between his lips. ‘I was taught that’, he said when he had eventually ejected it, ‘by my grandmother.’ He looked straight at Winter and his fantastic words coupled themselves with a glance of the most lucid intelligence. ‘You should try it in moments of stress.’ His eyes drifted across the room. ‘Well, Jerry old man’ – he was faintly maudlin again – ‘I’ll be seeing you. Some chaps over there. Must do the polite. Lots of good fellows here tonight.’

  Growling in cresendo, Kermode moved across the room. But after a few paces he made a pause and a momentary turn. ‘Vagabond lag,’ he said; ‘that’s me.’

  Timmy was talking to Patricia. He believed himself – so tortuous is the commentary of intellect upon instinct – to be doing this largely because of Hugo Toplady. The ascendancy of Hugo had filled Timmy for the time being with a nice care for the proprieties; Patricia was Belinda’s special friend; it was proper that at this hour Belinda’s special friend should receive the attentions of Belinda’s only brother. So Timmy was offering sherry and – because he had been junior to Patricia at school – conversation a shade on the side of largeness.

  Patricia accepted the sherry with caution. She felt Timmy’s attitude to be indeed compounded chiefly of Toplady’s correctitude, together with something of the elder Mr Eliots kind-heartedness and a certain genuine if fleeting interest of his own. Were it not that he was distinguishably scared as well she could almost have seen herself as a sort of well-preserved old lady who has spirit enough to earn the impersonal interest of the young, and who is really grateful for their passing, friendly, patronizing words. Because Timmy made her feel like this she detested him for an intolerable puppy, for another damned Barbary ape – the evening’s adventure was still horridly in her head – and for a youth far from improved since the period when he had given much ingenuity to the construction of ink bombs. At the same time she liked exceedingly certain random things about him: notably his ears and his neck and the backs of his hands. And this seemed to Patricia a system of feeling so capricious and irrational that she too was scared. So she put her knees and her heels and her toes together and contemplated the largely conversing Timmy in a particularly cool and level way.

  ‘And how’, asked Timmy amiably, ‘is Run-girls-run? Still time for all that?’

  Patricia digested this ancient and objectionable description of female athletics and struggled against a feeling that her very presentable legs were growing gawky and aggressively muscular beneath her trailing frock. ‘There’s real tennis at the Abbey,’ she said. ‘It’s a tremendous place. Have you ever been?’

  ‘Never. And Belinda doesn’t even bring home all the fun: Shoon buys this and Shoon presents that. Daddy is eager to see the Collection; he collects Pope himself, you know – only a Pope collection doesn’t look at all brassy. It seems that the little man did most of his writing on the other side of the weekly bills, and the general layout is quite without dignity. Compendious, though – litterateurs can browse on the one side and economists and social historians on the other. No laborious hunting for the laundry bills as with Shelley. There they are on the other side of the poems. Incidentally, the showiest collection here is my butterflies. Come and look.’

  Timmy’s chatter was losing breadth and becoming disjointed, as if his mind were turning half to other things. But he led Patricia across the room and amid the eddy of Mr Eliot’s guests they inspected the butterflies. Timmy expatiated on them at random – it was plain that on the whole subject of diurnal insects his mind had been long a blank – and Patricia had leisure to remember that a few minutes before she had been visited by some pleasurable reflection which now escaped her. A brief chase backwards and she caught it; it was the feeling that in Timmy there were frequent flashes of his father. A moment’s consultation of her opinions of Mr Eliot senior assured her that he stood in her head as among the most charming of men. She looked again at the backs of Timmy’s hands as they lay on the show-case and felt that the drift of her thoughts gave good cause for alarm; she listened to Timmy airily entertaining the well-preserved old lady and felt that the outlook was even bleak. She and this particular Barbary ape had better part. ‘Would you really like to see the Abbey?’ she heard herself saying. ‘I have an idea there’s going to be a sort of mass invitation presently, and if so I rather hope you’ll come. It’s amusing – a huge and improbable fantasy from top to bottom.’

  ‘I’m tired of fantasies.’ Timmy had turned towards her, moody and increasingly scared. Their eyes met. ‘Why Patricia! I’m so sorry: it was rude. And I really would like to see the Abbey. I was thinking of this chronic fantasy at home. When do you think the invite will be?’

  They looked at each other for a moment in an informed silence – booked for prolonged encounter. ‘What about the chronic fantasy at home?’ Patricia asked abruptly.

  ‘This series of foolish jokes and dismal ditties merely puts the lid on it. The deplorable Spider has outstayed his welcome and it’s more than time that he was led into the wings. Sometimes I feel it’s my business to usher him off.’

  ‘Why ever should you feel that?’

  ‘Because I ushered him on. The Spider was my first birthday present. Daddy felt that a son was going to be a frightfully costly luxury.’

  Patricia looked Timmy critically up and down. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘wasn’t he right? I imagine your running costs aren’t particularly low.’

  ‘No doubt. But nowadays the family is absolutely affluent and the stories go on just because there are so many people shoving. It’s intolerable. I think that daddy and everyone would be better with the Spider killed off. Perhaps this funny-business will do the trick. Perhaps that’s the idea.’

  Patricia put down her glass. Timmy was wilful. There were qualities in his father which had been wilfulness thirty years ago; the mood was something born in him. ‘To kill off the Spider?’ she said. ‘Let’s hope that the idea isn’t to kill off his inventor – at midnight.’

  Timmy looked momentarily startled; then he smiled with an effect of intolerable confidence in his own judgement. ‘I’ve had one or two uneasy moments. But daddy is astonishingly
resilient. You know’ – he stretched himself slowly as if tugging at an oar – ‘I’m not sure that I’m not the joker myself.’

  ‘I don’t think that at all a good idea.’

  ‘Or it may very well be Belinda.’

  ‘Worse.’

  ‘Don’t you know that Belinda is absolutely ruthless?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I wonder’ – Timmy went off at a tangent – ‘if you are? How awful if sisters give one the whole truth about women. The theory is that there’s another side.’

  ‘Timmy’ – inexplicably Patricia was really cross – ‘it couldn’t be you. The thing began with a telephone call to your father while you were in the room with him.’

  ‘That’, said Timmy gravely, ‘gave me the idea. Will you have another glass of sherry?’ She shook her head, angry and almost frightened. ‘That was just an isolated joke of the sort that does from time to time occur. And it gave me or Belinda of course the idea. Do you think we shall bring it off?’

  Everybody’s nerves were strained. Patricia seized upon this fact as a working basis and looked at Timmy anew. He was lazily proposing to try out on her the role of magnetic young criminal such as might be conceived by Peter Holme. Partly it was the family taste for dramatics; partly it was something real in him, however fragmentary. This was a new – or an enlarged – view of Timmy. But his ears and his hands remained the same.

  Patricia, seemingly doomed to double disgrace that day, felt tears coming into her eyes. She made another grab at the larger proportions of the situation and said calmly, ‘I’m sure I wish it were. You, I mean.’

  Timmy’s pose slid from him. He looked at her uncertainly. ‘Spiderismus bores you too?’

  ‘Not at all. If it’s you I wish you thoroughly bad luck. I say I rather hope it is because then I shall be barking up a wrong tree myself.’