From London Far

by Michael Innes

  ‘Come, come. Properjohn’s little insurance policy.’

  ‘I tell you I don’t–’

  This time it was Jean’s voice that interrupted Flosdorf’s protestations. ‘Come out!’ it called. ‘Come out and over here. There’s somebody I want to introduce you to.’

  III

  In a sheltered corner of this uppermost thrust of Dove Cottage a man and a girl were sun-bathing. Screened behind a great sheet of glass, the couple were as yet unconscious of being observed. The man was middle-aged, in rude health running somewhat to flesh, and he was simultaneously enjoying the remains of a cigar and a thoughtful study of the girl’s knees. Habit apart, there seemed to be no reason why he should not study the superincumbent parts of her anatomy as well, for the girl was stripped for bathing to a degree which Meredith could not at all approve. This, as much as her expression, gave her an eminently vacant look; she might have been a cover girl waiting for slabs of letterpress to be disposed about her, together with a price tag in the region of 15 cents. As something of the sort the man appeared content to regard her through wreaths of cigar smoke. And this, Meredith could not but obscurely feel, was unjust to the girl, who was very well habituated to stepping off the page and becoming a perfectly actual little wanton. Meredith had just arrived at this conclusion (which displays his mundus mulierum as expanding rapidly) when Jean stepped round the glass screen. ‘Hullo, Dr Higbed,’ she said. ‘How are you?’

  Dr Higbed, whose contemplation of the cover girl’s knees had grown exceedingly absent, immediately disposed his features into an expression of practised lasciviousness. This he then proceeded to smooth away behind the urbane mask of the social man. And having completed this ritual tribute to the great male Higgy he rose and bowed. ‘How do you do?’ he said. ‘Do you live here? I have an idea that we have met–’

  At this moment Flosdorf hurried up. ‘Say!’ he called. ‘What are you doing here, anyway?’

  Higbed was offended. ‘Going to have a swim,’ he said. ‘I was brought over by Miss–’

  ‘You darn little dumbell!’ Flosdorf turned upon the girl in a sort of panicky fury. ‘Who gave you leave to let him out of the Belvidere? Wasn’t it your assignment to keep him there, quiet and happy? And what could be simpler than that?’ Flosdorf cast upon Dr Higbed a fleeting glance of considerable penetration. ‘Easier than eating candy – and you fall plumb down on it.’ He pulled out a watch. ‘Don’t you know sometimes Mr Neff comes up here right now? Go and hold him off – any way you can think of.’ And Flosdorf looked round positively wildly. ‘I’d better get a car to take you back to the Belvidere straight away.’ He turned and hurried off, propelling the girl before him with uncompromising thwacks on one of the few draped portions of her person. Presently there was a rapidly diminishing whir as Flosdorf, the cover girl, and the Ascension hurtled precipitately downwards.

  ‘Odd,’ said Higbed. ‘Decidedly odd. But, of course, it’s natural that the husbands mustn’t be let know.’

  Jean stared at him. ‘What was that?’

  ‘Nothing – nothing at all. But, you know, I’m sure we’ve met before – and more than once?’ Higbed peered at his late fellow captive in what had all the appearance of honest perplexity. ‘Nice part of the States this, don’t you think? Mild climate for the time of year.’

  ‘My dear sir’ – Meredith now came forward – ‘I fear that you are still considerably distraught. Anything that we can do–’

  ‘Distraught? I’ve no idea what you are talking about. I have just been remarking that this is a very pleasant part of the world. Nice people, too.’ Higbed reached for his drink. ‘Enjoying myself, I must say. Relaxation from a great many duties and responsibilities. Always kept rather too many irons in the fire. As a matter of fact, I’m Higbed.’

  ‘That’, said Jean, ‘is what you told the Highlanders who were trying to cast out the devils. Don’t you remember?’ She walked slowly round Higbed. ‘Doesn’t seem to have left any weals or scars. Seen any furniture vans lately?’

  ‘Surely’, added Meredith, ‘we are not mistaken in supposing you to have been abducted?’

  ‘Abducted? Nonsense! Can’t think what you mean.’

  ‘Dr Higbed, when we last heard of you it was as the prisoner – for it was certainly that – of a criminal called Properjohn. And Properjohn has definite connexions with the monstrous establishment upon which we are at present perched. Do I understand you to assert that you are here of your own free will? Pray explain yourself.’

  ‘Explain myself!’ Higbed, who had been beginning to remember to eye Jean speculatively about the knees, looked indignant at Meredith. ‘I am here, sir, in professional attendance upon a patient. You must be well aware that the position of a psychiatrist is often a delicate one – and particularly when his eminence’ – Higbed coughed – ‘when his experience is such that he is consulted by persons of note in a community. I am afraid that I cannot discuss my present responsibilities more fully.’

  ‘Do you ask us to believe’, said Meredith, ‘that your professional services were so keenly desired by a person on the other side of the Atlantic that he caused you to be dogged by furniture vans through the streets of London and Edinburgh – and indeed to be so harried that you took temporary leave of your senses?’

  Higbed looked elaborately puzzled. Then he looked as elaborately comprehending. ‘Miss Halliwell!’ he exclaimed. ‘I knew the name would come back to me. And I am very sorry to know that your old trouble has returned.’

  ‘My old trouble! Why, you–’ Speech momentarily failed Jean – chiefly, perhaps, because Higbed’s glance was conscientiously appraising as well as sympathetic. ‘I’m going to dress.’

  Meredith watched her march off. ‘Dr Higbed,’ he began, ‘I am bound to say–’

  ‘Sad case – very sad case indeed. Nice girl – but definitely suffers from delusions about men to whom she is sexually attracted.’ Higbed shook his head and looked at Meredith. ‘Has she had any delusions about you? Probably not.’

  ‘I had better say at once–’

  ‘A sadistic trait, of course. Fantasies in which the beloved is subjected to all sorts of indignities and humiliations. And these reveries are presently believed in as having actually occurred. Hence the poor girl’s notion that I have been thrashed by Highlanders, and so on. But why Highlanders, I wonder?’ And Higbed’s expression became that of one who ponders a problem of superior scientific interest. ‘There is an interesting point of symbolism about that.’ He shook his head again and sighed. ‘It is some years since Miss – Miss Halliwell, did I say? – consulted me. The analysis was broken off at an unfortunate point. You are no doubt familiar with what we call a transference–’

  ‘You may as well know’ – Meredith had altogether unwontedly raised his voice – ‘that the story of your being soundly thrashed by Highlanders I had from a very hard-headed Lowlander, a captain in the Mercantile Marine. And that he was indulging in sadistic fantasies about the beloved, or had ever effected a transference of his affection upon you, Dr Higbed, I am quite unable to credit. In short, sir, you have attempted to evade an explanation by a monstrous aspersion of Miss Halliwell’s character such as only your noxious and multifarious scribblings make me willing to believe you capable of perpetrating.’ Meredith paused for breath upon this indignant period. ‘And now you had better return to the disreputable young person who was instructed to treat you like eating candy.’

  But much of this Higbed appeared not to have heard. ‘Of course,’ he said placatingly, ‘there is always a substratum of fact upon which such fantasies are built. And it is true that I travelled here not altogether willingly in the first instance. I had received, under circumstances which were somewhat obscure, an invitation to attend a wealthy patient in America. The fee proposed was not unsatisfactory, but, nevertheless, I was obliged to decline. I had a great deal of work on hand, so I turned it dow
n. Well, they wouldn’t take it, and put – um – considerable pressure upon me to come. And in the end I came. I’m bound to say I don’t regret it – don’t regret it at all.’

  Meredith had with considerable difficulty restrained himself during this explanation. ‘You mean’, he asked, ‘that you find the patient interesting?’

  ‘Patient?’ Higbed looked momentarily blank. ‘Well, I haven’t yet met her, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Her?’

  ‘Or, rather, I haven’t met them.’ Higbed, who had downed several drinks in the course of this conversation, lowered his voice confidentially. ‘For I should imagine it to be a syndicate. After all, even for wealthy folk a good deal of money has been involved: for instance, they seem to have provided a whole professional library for my use. So I imagine it must be several women. And their husbands, of course, have to be kept in the dark. That is why there has been a certain amount of concealment, and why that fellow Flosdorf gets in such a fuss. I have no doubt, my dear sir, that you find it rather out of the way. But I assure you that in my profession there are delicate situations which must be courageously met.’ And Higbed’s features assumed an expression of monumental decorum.

  For a moment Meredith was less angry than bewildered. ‘But how’, he asked, ‘can a syndicate of wealthy women require your services as a psychotherapist? It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Ah!’ Higbed took a pace forward and placed his hands before his bare pink torso in the attitude of one who grasps the lapels of a coat. This was evidently his public-lecture manner. ‘Maladjustment!’ he said. ‘Maladjustment, with its terrible toll of consequent neurosis. The white woman’s burden.’ He paused and tapped Meredith displeasingly on the naked shoulder. ‘Did you ever meet a Cherokee squaw with agarophobia?’

  ‘I’ve never met one at all.’

  ‘Or a Chinese woman addicted to fetichism? Have you ever known the happiness of a Hindu wife to be ruined by persistent zoophilia, or a female Mundugamor or Tchambuli to suffer from Pygmalionism?’

  ‘From what?’ Meredith was startled.

  ‘Pygmalionism – exclusive sexual attachment to statues or pictures. It is an increasingly prevalent disorder in modern society.’ Higbed, apparently unaware of how much this information struck Meredith, raised an admonitory finger. ‘And all these troubles result from the ignorance of Western man, for centuries unlettered in the art of love.’

  ‘I suppose that Pygmalionism–’

  ‘Read the Kama-Sutra, my dear sir. Read the Anangaraga. Read the Perfumed Garden of the Sheik Neffzawi. Or, better still, read my own recensions of these invaluable works. To guide our thwarted and inhibited modern sisters–’

  Not even Don Perez Sierra y Campo had been quite so bad as this. ‘Are you under the impression’, Meredith interrupted, ‘that you have been brought here at the instance of a group of women who propose to install you as their tutor and – and feeder in licence?’

  ‘In sexology.’ Higbed smiled complacently. ‘The ars amatoria, my dear sir, of a happier age. A certain amount of skilled instruction by a world authority. What proposal could be more blameless – more laudable, indeed? A few studious weeks. A comprehensive course of instruction – of course, purely on the theoretical side.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’ve got it wrong.’ Distaste had faded from Meredith’s mind and he found himself of a sudden quite amiably disposed to this unfortunate man and his fantasies. For fantasies he sensed that they were: confronted by the maenad women and when not protected by his lecturer’s dais, the learned Higbed would come off even more poorly than the Misses Macleod’s Shamus. Moreover, he was barking up altogether the wrong tree. For the professional purposes for which he had been brought to Dove Cottage, no amount of information on the Sheik Neffzawi’s Perfumed Garden could have the slightest relevance. ‘I think you will find’, said Meredith, ‘that in these speculations you are being betrayed by your own versatility. It is in some other capacity that your services are required. And I really don’t know about a few weeks.’

  ‘But certainly it is to be for only a few weeks! I have been assured that I shall be back in London–’

  ‘Dr Higbed, you cannot surely place any confidence in the assurances of people who have taken – well, such extremely drastic steps to contrive your attendance here? At the moment you appear to enjoy a fair measure of freedom. I urge you – nay, I beg you – to escape from this grotesque and sinister place and seek the security of the local police.’

  Higbed smiled indulgently – and then this expression was replaced by one of conventional concern. ‘The security of the police? Are you quite sure, my dear sir, that you are not coming yourself to harbour mild feelings of persecution? I have known quite bad cases to begin with an irrational solicitousness for the safety of others.’

  ‘I repeat that I greatly doubt the few weeks.’ The sun had disappeared and it was now unpleasantly chilly on the topmost perch of Dove Cottage; nevertheless, Meredith continued to wrestle with this insufferable man. ‘Did you ever read the tale of the kidnapped expert?’

  ‘I never heard of it.’

  ‘There are a great many versions. I believe you will find one or two in the Sherlock Holmes stories. Something goes wrong with a hydraulic press used by a gang of coiners and a skilled engineer has to be called in. But of course, he must never be let go again. You follow me?’

  Higbed appeared to follow. For a moment his confidence visibly flickered. ‘Nonsense!’ he said. ‘Mere melodrama.’

  ‘But then the affair has taken you through a good deal of mere melodrama already, has it not? And I can well imagine the services of a psychiatrist being required in circumstances where a mere assurance of professional secrecy would not be a sufficient guarantee of safety to the patient or his associates. You might be required to deal with the psychological aftermath of some horrible crime.’ Meredith paused. ‘You have agreed to remain here partly for profit, no doubt, and partly through certain ridiculous and illusory expectations of conducting something between a female academy and a harem. Actually, you will be required to treat, not a gaggle of women, but a single man. I suppose him to be what I should call mad. And his continued madness is of a nature to endanger certain of his employees and, it must be said, accomplices. It is they who first approached you unsuccessfully in London and later went the length of kidnapping you. It is they who have later squared you with luxurious treatment. But when you have served their turn – and equally whether you succeed in your professional treatment or fail – I judge it very likely that you will simply be put in a sack and dumped in the lake. Please think it over. Good afternoon.’

  And Meredith, taking one glance at Higbed and seeing that no more could be done, walked off to change. Dusk was falling. The swimming pool of Otis K Neff was shadowy. The sharks appeared to have gone early to bed.

  IV

  A countryman of Mr Neff’s has cited as an example of the oddities of the human mind the persuasion that rich men judiciously vindicate their grandeur by inhabiting structures so vast that they can only appear to infest them like vermin. But the image thus evoked by Thoreau of minute creatures crawling painfully down interminable corridors Mr Neff had in at least one important particular very successfully modified. Down the corridors of Dove Cottage it was quite unnecessary to crawl, since every corridor took the form of two gigantic conveyor belts. Along these belts Mr Neff, Mr Neff’s guests, and Mr Neff’s servants were effortlessly fed to their appropriate destinations just as if they were so many nuts and bolts in a well designed assembly plant. It is conceivable that Thoreau would have considered nuts and bolts thus marshalled and promenading as of even less dignity than rats or lice. But Mr Neff simply did not look at the matter in this way. He had applied himself rationally to the problem of cutting down the number of foot-pounds of energy daily required of one who would inhabit a Wollaton Hall expanded to occupy an area indentical with that of
Hampton Court.

  Or not quite rationally. For what had set Mr Neff upon this particular innovation had, in point of fact, been a dream: a recurring and harassing dream in which he everlastingly plodded down inconceivably gorgeous and elaborate vistas without ever getting anywhere that he really wanted to go. That it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive was decidedly no part of Mr Neff’s philosophy, and this dream (which Dr Higbed would certainly have found interpretable at several different levels of experience) worried him a good deal. Presently it invaded, too, his waking consciousness, until at length as he plodded about his Cottage he was frequently doubtful as to whether he were dreaming or not. By constructing corridors in which he never did anything but stay put, Mr Neff, like the Deity on the occasion of Creation, firmly divided night and day. In his dreams he might endlessly toil through corridors still, but during his waking life the corridors should as endlessly toil past him.

  It is no longer motion cheats your view, thought Meredith as a remote coign of Dove Cottage hurtled towards him, As you near it the land approaches you. He stepped with quite practised agility from his conveyor belt to a turntable, was swept in a wide arc round a spacious hall, fed into another corridor and presently deposited before double doors which gave upon a suite of rooms. Certain embarrassments with which a submarine had confronted an inadequately married couple were most prodigally obviated here. There were two bathrooms, two bedrooms, and an intervening salon the proportions of which would have made it entirely suitable for an ambassadorial reception. He crossed this with some impatience and knocked at a farther door. ‘Jean,’ he called, ‘I think I’ve made it out.’

  ‘Made it out?’ Jean appeared in an evening gown which Meredith felt to be decidedly exotic. But then, of course, as between Tampico on the one hand and North Oxford or the environs of Cambridge on the other there must be substantial discrepancies in a matter so mutable as that of feminine couture. ‘You mean about Higbed?’ Jean asked.