From London Far

by Michael Innes

  ‘Yes. The fact is–’ Meredith hesitated. ‘Well, did you ever happen to hear of something called Pygmalionism?’

  ‘Of course.’ Jean looked surprised. ‘It’s a fancy name for iconolagnia.’

  ‘For what?’ Meredith was quite perturbed by this readiness in the field of sexual pathology.

  ‘Iconolagnia. The element of non-aesthetic pleasure in the contemplation of gods in fig-leaves and goddesses barely in that. Of course, it has to be an exclusive interest. Anyone can get an occasional faintly carnal pleasure from a painting, can’t they?’

  ‘I suppose they can.’ Meredith nodded uncertainly. ‘You know, when I first saw the Horton Venus in Bubear’s passage I took it for a moment to be a real woman. And then when I realized that it was a painting I experienced a distinct pleasurable surprise. Would you say that was iconolagnia?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Jean was reassuring. ‘That was just a mixture of modesty and artistic appreciation. It’s obvious that Neff hasn’t any modesty to speak of. Are you suggesting that he hasn’t any artistic appreciation either?’

  Meredith looked round the vast salon in which they stood. ‘I should think it demonstrable that he hasn’t a scrap. But the point is this. Higbed has deluded himself into the belief that he has been brought here by a group of women anxious to make – um – certain recondite studies in which he supposes that he might assist them. Whereas in point of fact I judge that the explanation must be quite different. And, curiously enough, it was his making some chance reference to Pygmalionism (for he blathered a great deal, as you might expect) that set me on the track of it. When you come to think of it, any man who spends vast sums of money on secretly buying and hoarding stolen paintings must be pretty mad. No true love of the arts could lead him to do such a thing.’

  ‘I disagree.’ Jean was suddenly very much the person who had written those papers on Minoan weapons in the Hellenic Review. ‘Think of all the immemorial stories of dragons stealing and guarding human treasure – which meant jewels and armour and utensils finely wrought: the equivalent, in fact, of everything that we now think of as art. Why did the dragons do it? It wasn’t iconolagnia or Pygmalionism, we may be sure. The fact is that the creatures had robust aesthetic sensibilities and liked beautiful things just for their beauty. At the same time they were loathly worms, inhuman and utterly without morals, and they didn’t care two hoots whether they came by all those beautiful things honestly or not. And I’ll bet it’s just the same with Neff. He’s a dragon – a horribly powerful modern dragon with oil interests and railroad companies instead of fiery breath and yard-long talons. And he just gathers all these beautiful things and sits on them for the sake of sitting.’

  ‘That’s just it!’ Meredith interrupted as rapidly as if he were countering a colleague on Martial. ‘For the sake of sitting, and not for the beauty of the things in themselves. It’s like being a miser, as that admirable young man in the flying-boat suggested. And the activities of the miser are based as you know on a certain morbidity of development. He is a person whose notions of love and possession haven’t progressed beyond those of a very small infant. Now, Neff collects pictures and so on not quite in that spirit, but somewhere near it. They don’t minister to his sense of beauty, nor just to his sense of power and opulence in any ordinary way. They have become love-objects. It’s like women doting over toy dogs, or men senselessly keeping half a dozen mistresses hidden away in different parts of a great town.’

  ‘Well I’m blessed!’ Jean was looking at Meredith in the frankest surprise. ‘But go on.’

  ‘Of course, it’s disconcerting and repellent.’ Meredith was by now so satisfied with his discovery that he made this statement in a rather perfunctory way. ‘Still, it’s a reasonable hypothesis, and certainly the only one I can think of as covering the facts. Neff’s going hungrily round secretly possessing himself of picture after picture is a sort of perversion – a streak of madness which has now begun to spread. And all those people who have been his pimps and procurers have become afraid of some open scandal which would expose this whole monstrous trade in stolen masterpieces. So some of them – Properjohn and Flosdorf, for instance – decided that he must be cured or controlled by some suitable psychological treatment. But they daren’t risk bringing in an American doctor openly, and so they kidnapped an English one and are holding him against the critical moment.’

  ‘But I don’t know what you mean by the critical moment.’

  Meredith hesitated. ‘Think of the man who keeps all those mistresses – and who, because of some sense of guilt, keeps them absolutely secretly. Or think of the miser with his hoard. Each has a counter-impulse to tell, to let people see. I’ve read cases of such men finally inviting their friends–’

  ‘Good heavens!’ Jean was looking more surprised still. ‘Do you mean that as Neff gets loopier and loopier about these artistic fetiches or whatever Higbed would call them he is likely to invite his friends and rivals in a big business way to peer at them through keyholes?’

  ‘Well, something like that. He’s liable to give the game away somehow. And not just as a matter of simple recklessness or boastfulness, since there would be no point in bringing in a Higbed to combat that. The impulse Higbed might be able to deflect or resolve must be, broadly speaking, a pathological one – like this Pygmalionism, or treating pictures as erotic counters. I’ve said it’s very disagreeable.’

  ‘What is much more relevant is that it’s very incredible. I don’t believe a word of it.’

  ‘Very well!’ Meredith was quite nettled. ‘We will take it that Neff is a simple amateur of the arts. At the same time, we know that Higbed, who is an accomplished psychiatrist, has been brought here, willy-nilly, as what Properjohn called an insurance policy – and because, in the fellow Flosdorf’s words, purveying stolen pictures to Neff is like sitting on a volcano and waiting for it to erupt. I invite you to connect these facts on any theory other than my own.’

  ‘And I invite you to wait until we see Neff – which I suppose we’re going to do at dinner. Is he the Old Dragon, swinging the scaly horror of his folded tail? Is he the New Pygmalion, dreaming of biting succulent gobbets out of the Horton Venus? The way he handles his eating irons will show.’ Jean, who was fiddling with her hair before a huge mirror, turned round as if a thought had suddenly struck her. ‘Those Giorgiones of ours – have you seen them?’

  ‘Yes. Flosdorf has had them unpacked. I should judge them to be fine paintings of that period – but whether actually by Giorgione or not I am, of course, without the connoisseurship to say.’

  ‘But you can say whether they are iconolagnic? Giorgione could be when he tried. Think of the Sleeping Venus at Dresden.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, they are not. The severest puritanism, that is to say, could not regard them as in any sense improper pictures.’

  ‘I see.’ Jean paused. ‘And do you remember something we learnt right at the beginning: that Neff had turned keen on archaic sculpture?’

  ‘Dear me! yes.’

  ‘Well, wouldn’t you say that archaic sculpture represented rather a severe taste in the New Pygmalion? Would anyone think of biting gobbets out of the Proserpina of Chiusi, or of peering through a keyhole at the Apollo of Delphi or a Canopic urn? And although the iconolagnic Neff might very well give an El Greco to the Elks how could he bear to part with that Ingres to the Aquatic Club? Your theory seems to me feebler and feebler the more one looks at it. In fact I think it would look much better if it stood on its head.’ And Jean, who appeared quite to have forgotten her own reasonable suggestion of waiting to see what acquaintance with Mr Neff might produce, nodded emphatically at Meredith.

  ‘Stood on its head? If I may say so, there is no more barren controversial trick than standing the other man’s theory on its head.’ Meredith looked very severely at Jean. ‘And, anyway, I don’t see how it can be done.’

&nb
sp; ‘Nothing simpler. You say Higbed is here to make Neff sane. I say he is here to make him mad.’

  ‘I just don’t understand you.’

  ‘Well, it’s like this. Clearly enough, Neff is extremely eccentric. Look at this house and those horrible fish. And it might very well be to the interest of powerful people about him to drive him some stages further into downright madness. To get control of things, you know, or to prevent defalcations from being discovered. Of course, if they were sufficiently unscrupulous they might simply liquidate him straight away. But with a man holding such immense interests it is easy to imagine particular circumstances in which a good, certifiable madness would be preferable. You will agree to that?’

  ‘Within limits, yes.’ Meredith was cautious. ‘But I don’t at all see–’

  ‘It’s as clear as a pikestaff! For can you imagine anyone better able to drive a man mad than Higbed?’

  ‘And that, no doubt, is why they started by driving Higbed himself mad. Just to give him a vivid sense of the effect required. I think your idea is utterly fanciful.’

  ‘It’s not nearly so fanciful as your Pygmalionism, Richard Meredith.’ And the author of papers on Minoan weapons tossed her head in a not altogether scholarly way. ‘For why Higbed? Higbed is a psychiatrist. But quite a large body of men are psychiatrists. What then distinguishes him from these? The fact, I should say, that he is thoroughly unscrupulous. Bring him here forcibly and, ten to one, he can be corrupted – a thing you probably couldn’t predict of a single other skilled man in his profession. Very well. That points to his being brought for the most sinister purpose. And what is the most sinister purpose such a man could fulfil? Clearly that of using his knowledge of the mind the wrong way round – getting some hold on Neff (who is hypochondriac, likely enough) and edging him imperceptibly into the madhouse. You see? And I would say that my argument amounts almost to a demonstration. And even if it’s only a hypothesis it’s miles better than yours. Don’t you think?’

  ‘I do not think. In fact, your argument (as you are pleased to call it) is an outrageous piece of sophistry.’ Meredith spoke with the most convinced emphasis. ‘And I would say further–’

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir.’

  Both Meredith and Jean swung round, startled. Framed in the doorway stood an impeccably filmic butler such as it was inevitable that an establishment telescoping Hampton Court, Wollaton Hall, and four Queen Anne mansions should own. This functionary bowed with a freezing grandeur. ‘Mr Neff’s compliments, sir,’ he said, ‘and he hopes that the Signora and yourself will dine with him at eight o’clock.’

  ‘We shall be very happy.’

  The man bowed again and left the room. Prompted by a common impulse, Jean and Meredith moved to the door and peered after him. Standing perfectly still and bolt upright, Mr Neff’s butler was receding rapidly upon his conveyor belt. He was like the detached figurehead of some ancient and haughty ship borne by a strong current towards the horizon.

  V

  But the encounter with Mr Neff (Meredith felt afterwards) had much the feel which those must experience who participate in a head-on naval battle. For Mr Neff, surrounded by a whole flotilla of auxiliaries, was first sighted at a distance representing almost the extreme length of the Cottage, and as he rapidly advanced he had the appearance of an admiral issuing from his bridge all that multiplicity of orders which must prelude an engagement. Actually, Mr Neff was conducting a conversation with a business associate in Johannesburg, and this was why an attendant stood beside him on the conveyor belt dextrously paying out a telephone cord as Mr Neff and his entourage were propelled forward. On each side were girls with open writing pads, behind were two menservants carrying a variety of garments (for Mr Neff was as yet but imperfectly attired) and behind this again was a little posse of important-looking and well-dieted gentlemen – presumably clients or familiars of Mr Neff – whose attitudes wavered between the largest confidence and a covert uneasiness at their overwhelming surroundings. And as this line of battle moved rapidly towards Meredith and Jean, so did those two move rapidly towards it. It is well known that the issue of modern naval conflicts depends upon split-second decisions; the moment comes at which the order must be given, the appropriate deflection achieved, and the enemy brought instantly and fatally within the rake of one’s fire. And some such lightning strategy, Meredith felt, there ought now to be. Only on Mr Neff’s conveyor belts one was much less manoeuvreable even than a battleship; in fact one was little better than a tram.

  As you near it the land approaches you… And Mr Neff was eminently terra incognita, territory virgin and unexplored. He liked Alma-Tadema; he had given an El Greco to the Elks; all else was unknown. Was he a Dragon? Were his hoarded pictures a sort of megalomaniac version of the row of Pin-up Girls favoured by the simple GI? And, if so, had his attachment to those empty images of desire reached a point of embarrassment only to be coped with by a kidnapped psychiatrist? Or did he appear to be one who by the same psychiatrist could cunningly be driven mad? Of all these probabilities it should be possible to make some lightning provisional assessment now. But Meredith found so disconcerting a quality in the spectacle of a group of men, at once gesticulating and standing as stock still as waxworks, advancing like so many tin soldiers in an ambitiously mechanized window display, that he was unable to set about any appraisal whatever. He saw only what was patent for any observer to see: a small, hurried man, either dynamic or merely fussy according as to how one chose to take him, and very fairly representative of the not very interesting class of captains of industry. Mr Neff – Mr Drummey had said – had come up the hard way. And he had not, Meredith presently judged – come up quite tip-top. He had not acquired the tricks of quiet and reticence which mark your magnate who has been born (as the poet adequately puts it) lapt in a five per cent Exchequer Bond. Mr Neff – as his domicile and his swimming pool might be held to presage – abundantly asserted himself, and in this he was like lesser and less secure members of his magnate breed. Immensely successful he had quite obviously been, and yet, equally obviously, he was not quite what he would fain imagine. What then, was the flaw? Certainly it could not consist in a willingness to help himself to other people’s property: for in that, after all, lay the very essence of the part. But might it somehow lie in the fact that prominent in that property were sundry works of human craft pre-eminent for beauty, and purveyed to their present illicit owner by the International Society for the Diffusion of Cultural Objects? There was the fact that Mr Neff was after his own queer fashion artistically creative; he had thought up the swimming pool, and the brooding dove which introduced Blake’s ‘Jerusalem’, and the general idea of a country home which should symbolize the spirit of progress. There was the possibility – But these were reflections far too slow for this hurrying moment. Mr Neff had tossed the telephone to the man paying out the cord, barked a couple of sentences at each of the girls with writing pads, snatched his tuxedo and a hairbrush from the attendant valets, waved Jean and Meredith off their conveyor belt, and with an agile leap landed beside them. The rest of the party proceeded on its way, rather like a convoy of harmless merchant vessels suddenly abandoned by a darting destroyer, and the owner of Dove Cottage was immediately isolated with his new guests. ‘Mr and Mrs Pantelli?’ he barked. ‘Pleased to meet you. Keep quiet.’ And he waved them once more on to the conveyor belt. ‘Not one dam’ word – see?’

  This was discouraging, for the pleasure which Mr Neff could experience in meeting persons whom he thus peremptorily forbade to converse must surely be of the most conventional sort. It was true, Meredith reflected, that Jean was decidedly pleasant just to look at, but this was scarcely a fact that should warrant a really courteous host’s demanding that she keep her mouth shut.

  But now Mr Neff spoke again. ‘Talk!’ he said.

  Meredith looked at him in astonishment. ‘But you have just required–’

  ‘That’
s better.’ Mr Neff nodded approvingly and jerked his thumb forwards. ‘Talk natural-like, so those folks won’t be wondering. But don’t talk art, or buying art; just keep mum on it – see? Too many people have been hearing this story I collect art big. Take Gipson there’ – and Mr Neff indicated what appeared to be the most consequential of the group forging steadily ahead before him – ‘Gipson keeps on leading round to pictures how I don’t like. Curiosity. Taking liberties with a man’s private interests. And it’s all wrong this story I collect art big.’

  The idiom of Mr Neff, it occurred to Meredith, was distinguishably akin to that of the disgraced Properjohn. Perhaps this pillar of progressive Americanism, like Homer and other great men, had also a dubious ancestry amid many cities. Meredith glanced at Mr Neff, thinking to discern if there were also some physical resemblance to Don Perez’s demoted controller of crates and boxes. And as Meredith glanced at Neff it so chanced that Neff glanced at Meredith – with the result that the latter found himself with several pieces of intelligence to review.

  The eye of Mr Neff was by no means mad; rather it was shrewd and calculating. But it was also irascible. Indeed, there smouldered in it the hint of certain wrathful fires which might well make Flosdorf or another quail. Mr Neff might be a man of peace; he might own a gold and ruby dove; he might be fond of massed choirs proposing to build Jerusalem in England’s – or Michigan’s – green and pleasant land. Nevertheless, he was a dangerous man, very well able to turn from such laudable constructive assertions to a simple raising hell. But this was not all – or indeed what was chiefly striking – in Mr Neff’s eye.

  For the eye so far was alien to Meredith’s experience – and yet Mr Neff’s eye was a familiar eye as well. In precisely what the familiarity consisted he found himself unable to say; it was an eye, so to speak, on some fringe of his own world which he could not at the moment further define. But now it appeared necessary to talk, and Meredith boldly decided to talk art despite the ban which Mr Neff had placed upon it. For he had, after all, no intention of really selling someone else’s Giorgiones or near Giorgiones to this unscrupulous collector, and there was the less need therefore of deference or tact.