Hamlet Revenge!

by Michael Innes

  The nineties had been quiet. There was Wilde’s too-beautiful white dining-room; later there was Whistler, and Lionel Dillon’s emergence, under that dazzling stimulus, as a dinner-table wit. The big portrait-commissions came in; the assault on the fashionable world was accomplished classically, as an assault by the fashionable world. There followed frequentation of the great London houses: Dillon, grown not unlike Lord Tennyson and in a resplendent Order secured at the expense of two goodish pictures sent to Central Europe, moving blandly through parties at which there was always royalty at the other end of the room. Finally there came the concordat with the Academy and, about the same time, Anne’s engagement to the Marquis of Kincrae, the Duke of Horton’s heir.

  All this is not to say that Anne Dillon was a careerist. Always she had been a creature fundamentally detached; a priestess, a famous wit had laid it down, of the Comic Spirit, dynamic with hidden mockeries. Her choice, she would say, had been most horridly limited; and squirarchy, any professional caste, any continental nobility would have bundled her out at once; only a great Whig house would have accepted her. And if she had grown into Scamnum with the years she yet kept something of her fallen days about her. Alone in the little Gibbons-style drawing-room, she would stand by the piano measuring herself against the girl who stood by the piano in Whistler’s portrait on the wall. The identical poise was there; for what time had softened and subdued in the flesh that delicate and sombre artistry had softened and subdued on canvas long ago.

  And still for the Duchess life must be delicately odd always, with phases of bolder comedy interspersed. It was the Dillon brandy-drinking coming out perhaps, this periodic indulgence in a larger scale. And the present frolic was an instance, a prank elaborated to a point at which even the Scamnum world would blink. Just such a big affair she would have organized in Hampstead times, her father now ridiculing and now joining in. But Lionel Dillon was dead these ten years, and of his set nobody remained but Lord Auldearn – Lord Auldearn and Max Cope, a crazy old man with a snowy beard and a courtly stoop, come down to bear this part by painting perhaps his last picture for the Academy: ‘The Tragedy of Hamlet played at Scamnum Court.’

  The play was only three days off. Members of the house-party had been arriving intermittently throughout the afternoon and the Duchess was still busy with introductions in the last minutes before dinner.

  ‘Diana, this is Charles Piper, who is going to excite you tremendously. Charles, Proust put a cousin of Miss Sandys’ in Sodome et Gomorrhe – or was it refused to put him in? Diana will tell you all about it. Diana, find out about Mr Piper’s new book for me. Look at poor Dr Bunney!’ Bunney, having apparently decided with a struggle that the black box would be an impropriety at this ceremonial hour, was standing before the fireplace without a motive in life. ‘Dr Bunney, come and have introduced to you Timothy Tucker – the strikingly handsome man in the corner. He published Piper’s book you know. Mr Tucker, let me introduce you to Dr Bunney: he too is passionately interested in phonetics.’ The Duchess gave a commanding nod at the ugly publisher, who instantly entered on a subject about which he knew nothing at all; such gymnastics were demanded as a matter of course at Scamnum parties. ‘And what’, asked Tucker gravely, ‘do you think of this younger German school?’ The question was ninety-nine per cent safe. Bunney was enchanted. Conversation went smoothly and efficiently on.

  Melville Clay, the veritable handsome man in the room, was introduced formally and without comment to Lord Auldearn. Gott stood by a window receiving squeaky but racy reminiscences of Beardsley from Max Cope. Gervase Crispin, the Duke’s elderly cousin, was coping with a strange American lady and her disconcertingly identical twin daughters. Elizabeth had been sent to insinuate to the little black man – another of her mother’s recent finds – the extent to which he might properly discuss politics with the Lord Chancellor. Noel was conversing with Gervase’s Russian friend, Anna Merkalova, in the polished French proper to a future member of the Diplomatic – and casting most undiplomatically venomous glances at Mr Piper, earnestly discoursing with Miss Sandys, meanwhile. The Duke, cruising amiably round, estimated the probable length of the dinner-table. He detested a meal at which his wife was not within hall and general talk possible. It was a small party, praise God, so far; but there would be another bevy by the late train And meanwhile the widow with the twin fillies, he supposed, was his pigeon. He hurried round to the Duchess to refresh his memory on this lady’s name. Mrs Terborg. And just in time.

  The minute hand of the Dutch bracket-clock dropped to the horizontal of eight-fifteen. Bagot, Scamnum’s venerable butler, appeared through a vista of opening doors. The Duke carried off Mrs Terborg without more ado. Noel, releasing himself from Anna Merkalova an improper moment before that lady was handed over to Bunney, made across the room. He was too late. Mr Piper and Miss Sandys, in unbroken talk, had been waved forward by their hostess. Timothy Tucker and Melville Clay had a Terborg twin apiece. Elizabeth held on to the black man, having to superintend – as Noel, gloomily returning, explained to Gott – the special oriental nosebag, Gott and Noel, with Gervase Crispin and Max Cope, went forward together as momentarily superfluous bachelor familiars of the house. The Duchess followed with Lord Auldearn. ‘Mixed biscuits, Ian,’ she said, ‘and champagne with an “h” in the Reims!’

  The Lord Chancellor chuckled. ‘And a barrel of apples in the studio for those in the know.’ To the Duchess of Horton, Lord Auldearn admitted what a rocky manner still hid from the world: that he was a man mellowed and appeased by success, slipping into that final mood – reminiscent, yet remote, tolerant yet comprehensively critical – in which one who has made his mark in the world prepares to take leave of it. And because there existed between him and Anne Dillon a long-standing and delicately handled sentimental relationship he would speak his thoughts to her as to no one else. ‘Not much more apple-picking for me now,’ he said, giving the apples a characteristic twist into some remote literary allusion. ‘And not much more Shakespeare either. Just a year, I think, with Horace and Chaucer – and then a hunt through Hades for a few affable and familiar ghosts.’

  ‘We don’t think of you as a ghost here, Ian. We’ve cast you, you see, as a very lively, wise old man.’

  Lord Auldearn shook his head. ‘A slippered pantaloon and a figure of fun. And Polonius is a ghost before the play’s ended.’

  The Duchess pressed his arm. ‘So are we all,’ she replied; ‘except young Charles Piper, who must live to write a great many more conscientious novels.’ Piper was to be Horatio.

  ‘Did you know Gott writes novels?’

  ‘Yes. But he’s ashamed of them because they’re not conscientious. He thinks they’re time stolen from all this business of old texts. I’ve been looking at that sort of thing for the play and it seems to me rather immoral labour. I have a feeling that such good wits should be in the Cabinet.’

  ‘My dear Anne, how seriously you’ve come to regard the burden of rule! What of seducing me from affairs of state for a week? But they do call in Gott’s sort, you know – for an emergency. It’s an odd thing, but there’s nobody like your professional seeker-out of truth for inventing a four-square, coherent system of lies. When propaganda is needed the don is the master of it.’

  ‘Touching lies,’ said the Duchess, ‘have you heard Gervase’s explanations of his Russian friend there?’ And she turned to arrange her table.

  Gott, unconscious of his potential role as a well of deceit in times of national emergency, was looking round the gathering with a producer’s eye. More and more he was realizing that the Tragedy of Hamlet played at Scamnum Court had assumed alarming proportions. It had begun as a family frolic. And now, although it would not be publicly reported, the dramatic critics were coming down as if to an important festival. Professors were coming to shake learned respectable bald heads over a fellow-scholar’s conception of an Elizabethan stage. Aged royalty was coming to be politel
y bewildered. Most alarming of all, ‘everybody’ was coming – for the purpose, no doubt, of being where ‘everybody’ was. And even if it was a select and serious everybody – a known set before whom a Lord Chancellor might mime without misgiving – it was still a crowd, and its reactions were unpredictable.

  The company that was to present Hamlet had one initial advantage. It was thorough. Its members possessed that tradition of thoroughness that goes along with Scamnum traditions of leisure and responsibility. The habit that would prevent the airy Noel from touching a cricket bat or a tennis racket without making a resolute onslaught on county form, the habit that would send Elizabeth forward from Somerville next year miraculously perfected in sundry dreary Old and Middle English texts, the habit that brought Gervase Crispin to his feet in the House of Commons to discuss battalions of figures with his eye innocently fixed on the roof – this would make Hamlet as good as efficiency could make it. But Gott was dubious all the same. Acting is such a difficult business that only one thing will make it pass – economic necessity. Act-or-out-you-go is the only really effective producer.

  ‘Don’t you think acting is the most unnatural thing in the world?’ It was the voice of one of the indistinguishable Misses Terborg – Miss Terborg One – on Gott’s right.

  ‘I was just thinking so’ – Gott noted to himself the absence of that sense of miraculous coincidence that had accompanied Elizabeth’s observation on sunsets earlier in the evening. ‘But some people would say that we most of us act uninterruptedly.’

  ‘Ah, but that’s different, isn’t it? We are always impersonating our own idealized image of ourselves – our persona, is it called? – in order to shine in our own eyes or in other people’s. Or we’re shamming something quite false in order to get something that our real self wants. But this business of becoming someone else and taking on his image and persona and desires – pure falsification, in fact – surely that is unnatural?’

  Gott on the one side and Melville Clay on the other regarded Miss Terborg One with some curiosity. Gott with his tutor’s instinct was placing this young lady’s mind provisionally among the good Two-ones; Clay was attracted by discussion of the theory of acting. He broke in eagerly:

  ‘It is the most unnatural thing in the world. Which is why it’s still thought rather disreputable – and why it’s so absorbingly interesting. One never becomes someone else. There’s no someone else to become; it’s only a bad and confusing metaphor. They talk about how the great actor lives his part and so on; but isn’t that just woolly thinking too? Acting’s acting – every exquisite moment when one’s on form. And that’s why it’s difficult for amateurs; because it’s all technique.’

  ‘Well,’ said Gott, ‘Hamlet is fortunately an almost indestructible play. And with the thing chiefly on your shoulders we’ll scrape home with it.’

  ‘Oh, more than that! This show’s already been a revelation to me of how rapidly clever people can acquire a specific skill. Lady Elizabeth’s good. And the Duke’s marvellous. They’ve both found the vital truth. If acting is a hundred per cent technique, technique is about seventy-five per cent timing.’ And Clay turned to enlarge on timing to the Duchess on his right.

  Yes, in the rehearsals so far held, Elizabeth had been good – and the Duke marvellous. It was difficult to get the master of Scamnum on the stage; at the appointed hour he would be engaged in instructing his bailiff, being instructed by his agent, or playing austere croquet with the vicar’s wife on the farther cedar lawn. His attitude to the whole affair was one of vague dubiety. But, once planted on Gott’s great platform stage in the Banqueting Hall, his part fell upon him like a mantle. Whether or not it were a matter of technique, Shakespeare’s cunning usurper Claudius stood completely realized amid his court.

  ‘Anne,’ the Duke was saying down the table, ‘about those flowers for the Long Gallery on Monday. What about having Shakespeare’s wild-flowers? I was looking at a book about them in the library, and at this time of year we could get almost the whole lot.’

  ‘Daisies pied,’ interposed Bunney firmly, ‘and violets blue, and lady-smocks all silver-white.’ He smiled round the table as one who has contributed neatly to the general elegance of the proceedings. Everyone looked kindly on Bunney except the Terborgs, who looked cold. Nowhere more than in the United States, Gott reflected, are there chasms.

  ‘Let’s go out and gather them,’ said Diana Sandys.

  ‘They would have to be gathered on Monday,’ objected the Duchess, ‘when we should be much too busy. But it’s a nice idea.’

  The Duke considered. ‘We might persuade Macdonald to send some of his lads into the woods for them – or perhaps the children from the lodges. I’ll speak to him.’ And, nodding over the possibility, he proceeded to give Mrs Terborg particulars on Shakespeare’s interest in gardening. Mrs Terborg, taking up the subject of flowers, made efficient conversation out of gloxinias, antirrhinums, chionodoxas, kolkwitzias – matters more familiar probably to Macdonald than to his employer. Charles Piper, some way down the table, attended with the undisguised concentration of a man who always makes notes before going to bed. Some lady in some future fiction would talk efficiently of gloxinias, antirrhinums, chionodoxas, kolkwitzias.

  ‘Who’, asked Miss Terborg One, ‘is the young man listening so attentively to my mother?’

  ‘Charles Piper, the novelist,’ replied Gott. ‘He has just published a very successful book called The Bestial Floor.’

  Miss Terborg One could almost be discerned flipping over some voluminous card-index in her mind. ‘Of course: “The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.” I suppose it’s about Christ?’

  ‘No. It’s about the childhood of Dostoyevsky.’

  ‘Dostoyevsky’, said Miss Terborg One firmly, ‘was very interested in Christ.’ Across the chasm, thought Gott, threads of connexion can always be traced. ‘Do you write novels?’ asked Miss Terborg One.

  Unconsciously, the Duchess came to the rescue. ‘And I decided we must have firemen. Giles, were there firemen in the Elizabethan theatre?’

  ‘There were fires,’ replied Gott cautiously.

  ‘Well, I’ve arranged for three men from King’s Horton – and I’ve said they must bring helmets. There will be one at each door beside the footmen.’

  ‘Anne,’ came Max Cope’s piping voice from up the table, ‘have you arranged for a detective too? Don’t you think a detective–’

  ‘A detective, Max!’

  ‘I mean, there will be a lot of jewellery and so on, won’t there? And a mixed crowd. And you’ve already got some pretty queer–’

  ‘Fish, sir?’ murmured Bagot, deserting his wines and breaking silence with inspired indecorum. Everybody at Scamnum knew that an eye had to be kept on old Mr Cope. His wits were gone: there was nothing left in him but a mere, sheer painting. He was promptly taken charge of by Mrs Terborg on the one hand and Gervase Crispin on the other for the rest of the meal.

  Lord Auldearn was conversing with the black man – with that remorseful deference which the English raj accords the Oriental visitor to the heart of Empire. Timothy Tucker was entertaining Elizabeth with fantastic anecdotes of a fellow-publisher.

  ‘…But Spandrel’s best stroke was with the Muchmoss. You’ve heard of her? She was a nice old party living in Devon and she sent him, years ago, a manuscript called Westcountry Families I Have Known. Spandrel has a nose and he smelt not family chat but novels in her. And sure enough he turned her into a solid market success. She was a nice old party with a good brain tucked away, and soon the Muchmoss Westcountry was esteemed. So after a few years Spandrel decided to build up a school. He found several other parties, not quite so old, and most luckily the Muchmoss – kind old soul – thought no end of them all. So you see, the Muchmoss sold them and they in turn were healthy for the Muchmoss. Well, that was all right – until the Muchmoss died. She died, unhap
pily, a bit too soon – before the Muchmoss atelier could do all its own heave and shove. Spandrel was stumped for a bit, but one day he had a revelation. He was walking in the Park, he says, when it came to him quite suddenly: the knowledge that the Muchmoss was still enjoying the Muchmoss school no end – in heaven. So he arranged a séance–’

  Noel, it occurred to Gott, was making surprisingly heavy going with Miss Terborg Two. He had plainly reached that desperate stage at which one drops this disconnected observation after that into a horrid well of silence. But at this moment one of these observations had a startling effect. Miss Terborg Two gave a loud scream.

  The literary activities of the Muchmoss ghost, Lord Auldearn’s polite questions on yogis and gooroos died, with other miscellaneous topics, round the table. Everybody looked askance at Noel – particularly Gervase, who jumped to the conclusion that he had retailed to an innocent virgin an anecdote which Gervase himself had published to the billiard room earlier in the day.

  Noel was apologizing profusely and confusedly both to the lady and to the table at large. ‘I’m most frightfully sorry; never thought of it as actually startling; just the story–’

  ‘Story!’ said Gervase grimly.

  ‘Just the story of the Black Hand, you know.’

  Miss Terborg Two made an agitated gesture upon her boyish bosom. ‘Stupid of me. Duchess, I’m so sorry – but secret societies and things have made me scared ever since a kid… The Black Hand!’

  The Duke looked with mild severity on his youthful kinsman. ‘What’s this foolery, Noel?’

  ‘Nothing at all, sir. Rubbishing joke… Elizabeth’s seen it…sort of threatening message. Thought it might amuse. Most terribly sorry to have distressed Miss Bertog – I mean Miss Terborg–’

  This was most sadly remote from the suave success with which Noel must one day dine about the embassies of Europe. Elizabeth took on the burden of further explanations. ‘A typewritten slip that came to Noel by post. It’s just a scrap from Shakespeare; something about revenge.’