by Paul Ableman
I turned and surveyed my family. I noticed that my wife seemed rather crestfallen and one of the girls with the babies began to sob.
“You realize,” I asked my publisher, “that the house is now uninhabitable?”
A troubled look came over his face. He darted a swift, compassionate glance at my huddled family.
“Clive, I’m going to send you some tents, some comfortable ones! Don’t protest. I want to send you some tents.”
That night we built a fire from the debris of the house and clustered around it. The next morning an official from a well-known refugee organization arrived and handed me a parcel which we later found to contain a pound and a half of tapioca and three rubber gloves. I distributed the gloves amongst the older girls and they seemed mildly pleased with them. We cooked the tapioca by scooping a hole amongst the cinders and baking it but this proved to be the wrong technique for tapioca and it all turned into fine ash.
In the afternoon the tents arrived from my publisher and, after erecting them, we moved in. They were, as he had promised, good tents but we could not help contrasting them unfavourably with our demolished home. For some weeks we attempted to reconcile ourselves to living in the tents but then I decided that it could not last indefinitely. Accordingly, I went down to my publisher’s office and remonstrated with him.
“It’s all right, Clive,” he reassured me, “we’re starting on the redevelopment immediately and we’re reserving a luxury mansion flat for you in the first block to go up.”
“How long will that take, Walter?”
“Ten days, a fortnight.”
This struck me as very little time for the construction of a twenty-five storey block of luxury flats with a revolving swimming pool on the roof, but my publisher assured me that modern techniques and materials were well up to it.
“We’re using cantilevers, of course, and we intend to pre-stress all the concrete before we reinforce it. First, we put up a central core and then just wrap the dust cover round it.”
I was still a little doubtful but I returned to our encampment and explained things to my family. The next day, as my publisher had promised, a large construction team arrived and built a high, wooden fence around the ruins of our house. For the next ten days there was continuous activity behind the fence and the following morning my publisher arrived, wearing a top hat and accompanied by several high officials and a film star. He invited me to join the group and, after a few speeches from the officials, the film star cut a strand of red tape and we all streamed on to the site. The block of flats was indeed complete but a glance showed me that my initial doubts had been justified. My publisher had not paid adequate attention to the matter of scale and the whole twenty-five storey block was only twelve feet high. On the roof, the little swimming pool slowly revolved. My publisher frowned irritably but, probably unwilling to lose face with so many influential people present, hurried on with the ceremony. He gravely conducted us around the building, squinting into the tiny rooms and indicating the bold design of the whole. After a while one of the officials hesitantly remarked:
“Of course, it’s a magnificent structure—but isn’t it rather small?”
“Oh yes,” agreed my publisher, “it’s a small block of flats all right. You will notice that each apartment has its own balcony.”
Finally the official delegation departed and my publisher and I were alone together. I could see that he was distressed at the débacle and so refrained from any further comment. Making an effort to smile briskly, he turned to me.
“Well, Clive, I said you wouldn’t have to wait long.”
“You’ve done a marvellous job, William,” I enthused. “I wouldn’t have believed it possible in the time.”
“Oh yes—determination, effort, attention to detail—anything’s possible if you try. Now then, old man, which flat do you want?”
I contemplated the little building, not wishing to seem critical.
“Well—” I squatted down and peered into a ground-floor window, “with all the children, it would probably be best.”
“A ground-floor flat, eh? I think that’s a wise choice, Clive.”
He crouched beside me. By bending our heads almost to the ground we could gaze into the rooms and my publisher eagerly pointed out to me their many attractive features. Finally, we stood up again.
“That’s it, then, Clive. You can move in at once if you want to.”
The next day I wrote my publisher a tactful letter explaining that, when we had attempted to occupy our new quarters, we had found that the rooms, being only six inches high, were not adequate to our needs. I urged him to bring a tape measure and verify the fact for himself. He arrived that afternoon with an architect and they spent several hours taking measurements. After this they conferred together and then my publisher approached me.
“It seems the dimensions are not entirely satisfactory, Clive.” He brooded for a moment or two, sighed, and then continued: “Clive, I’ve been thinking it over. This property development—vulgar business on the whole. Candidly, I regret that I ever embarked on it. So if you feel you’d care to resume possession of the site—dare-say you could rebuild your house for fifteen or twenty thousand—just an idea—”
That very day I contacted a firm of builders and arranged for the reconstruction of our old home. Within six months it was ready for occupation, reproduced down to the last detail, which was the hermit’s shelter in our living room. We moved in again and before long found it hard to believe that the place had ever been blown up by a publisher.
After this a quiet period ensued. I worked hard at my novel attempting, without much success, to reconstruct the brilliant first chapter which had been lost in the explosion. Naturally I often brooded on my three heroes and realized what a tremendous task I had set myself. Would they ever live harmoniously together in the pages of my book? Sometimes I doubted it. And yet the work slowly progressed. On occasion I would stand at my window, gazing out at the dripping eucalyptus trees and watching the sullen herds of elephant and moose rooting through the wild bamboo, and it would come over me with strange force, the sense of our joint and yet individual efforts on the earth. There in Bangor, Glebe was patiently adding spring after spring to his earth-borer. In Mushton, Guthrie Pidge was stuffing young minds with his exhaustive knowledge of sharks and pelicans and Pad Dee toiled in Connemara behind his yak, while here, in Cob Lane, I was chronicling their manifold, their multifarious, activities. I had a dizzy glimpse of the collaboration which is human life and my thoughts shuttled wildly about in the great pin-ball machine of my brain.
One morning I received a letter from Glebe informing me that the borer was now complete and ready for testing and inviting me down to Bangor for this event. In order to maintain the technique I decided to hitch-hike and accordingly I stationed myself the next day outside our house with a pineapple and a salami. Ours is a quiet lane and for several hours nothing passed. While waiting I noticed a young man on the other side of the street and, with a start, I recognized him as the father of some babies that had recently been born to two of my daughters. I crossed over at once and accosted him.
“You’re Elvin Beale, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Why the devil are you shirking your responsibilities?”
“Am I shirking them?”
“Look here, Elvin,” I urged, “I know that you’re fond of telephones but that’s no reason for neglecting two delightful infants and their mothers, is it?”
“It seems a rotten reason.”
“I’m not square. I don’t ask you to marry them but—why don’t you come and live with us for a while, simply to get to know them? Children have a way of twining themselves about you like a creeper. Moreover, we have several telephones that you can befriend. How about it?”
I took him persuasively by the arm and led him into the house and up to the bedroom where my two daughters were still in bed.
“There!” I urged. “Aren’t they fine
girls?”
“They’re jolly nice!” he panted.
“Well—why don’t you join them?”
I paused long enough to see him start to remove his shirt and then I set off once more to hitch-hike to Bangor. This time, I walked down to the main road. Then I waved the salami temptingly in the air and very soon a car pulled up.
It was a small car and the driver was wearing a clerical collar. I asked him if he was going in the direction of Mushton and he said that he was. I then courteously offered him some salami and, in deference to his calling, asked him if he believed in God. He did not answer my question but inspected the salami closely.
“It’s one of the finest salamis I’ve ever seen,” he enthused.
He then handed it back to me and we drove away.
“And do you believe in God?” I asked again.
“Oh, most decidedly. And I feel sure that He believes in me.”
He then informed me that he was a keen amateur ornithologist and had recently observed a strange owl perched on his rectory.
“At first,” he continued, “I took it for Cooper’s double-crested barn owl but I soon noticed that it had three crests. Naturally I then assumed it to be the lesser vetch owl but it had pink spots on its sternum. May I taste your salami?”
“Of course.”
“No—drat it!—there won’t be time. I turn off here.”
I immediately broke off a good third of the salami and pressed it upon him as the car drew up. I climbed out and watched him buzz happily away down a pleasant lane, the salami still clutched in his hand.
I was next picked up by a criminal but it was some time before I began to realize the fact. He was quiet at first as we hummed along, and then he asked me if I liked ferns. I told him that I was moderately devoted to these plants.
“They’re so green,” he rhapsodized. “When they’re not green, they’re so brown. They grow on the hills and they never drink whisky.”
He spoke in a quiet, elegant voice. He talked a great deal about ferns and was clearly deeply instructed in their habits. Next he began to talk about the name Colin. He said that it was a splendid name, suitable for a fern or for the finest gentleman in the land. He told me that if he had a pig or a son he would call it Colin.
“This very car you’re driving in is called Colin. Excuse me.”
He had pulled up at the kerb and he now walked rapidly into a jeweller’s shop. A little later he returned at a half-trot, firing a pistol back through the shop door. He entered the car and drove away rather rapidly. In a little while he turned and threw some bracelets and watches on to the back seat.
I was disturbed by this incident since I felt it signified that there was an unstable element in his character. However, I was lulled to such an extent, almost hypnotized, by his mellifluous voice that I made no comment. He now started talking about life in twelfth-century China. I was amazed at the breadth of his learning.
“In twelfth-century China life was good. Each family had its own patch of ferns and none of the ferns drank whisky. There was an elected parliament and it was known as the parliament of ferns. Each fern in this parliament was called Colin. Excuse me.”
Once more he got out of the car and this time he entered a clothing shop. After a few moments he emerged again. He held a large wad of banknotes in his hand but I noticed that he was not making good progress. The reason appeared to be that a man and a woman were clinging to him and he was methodically seeking to dislodge them with a neat little bludgeon. He soon succeeded, re-entered the car and we drove away. In spite of the drugged feeling induced by his potent conversation, I glanced backwards and saw the man and woman lying on the pavement.
“Look here,” I cried, “what happened to those two?”
“Those two?” he smiled a remote, brooding smile. “They decided to sleep and dream of the Ganges.”
I was dimly aware of a certain implausibility in this explanation but he now started talking again and my critical faculties were once more lulled. He began to talk about ferrous metals, occasionally digressing to note some important trait of non-ferrous metals or even alloys.
“Think of iron,” he murmured, “slumbering under the ferns. One day it is kissed awake and for the first time tastes whisky. I have encountered iron in many exotic parts—Egypt, Balham, Gospel Oak—and it has always addressed me as Colin. Copper, bronze and beryllium are astute metals.”
He now pulled up outside a police station and, with a quick movement, tossed something through a window. A moment later there was a blinding explosion. This snapped me to my senses and I hastily clambered out of the car and darted across the road. From there I watched dazed and wounded policemen staggering from the building and giving chase to my recent companion.
My last lift was with a doctor, a sullen man who admitted that his temperament had been ruined by epidemics. He deposited me in Bangor in the early hours of the morning and, as I descended from the car, he growled to himself:
“There’s another damned epidemic—fractures this time. I’ll bet this blasted hitch-hiker will have fractured some bone before dawn.”
With this chill prediction sounding in my ears, I found a room in a small hotel called “The Nude Nymph” and passed a tolerably comfortable night, marred only by a persistent dream that I was driving a high-powered salami called Colin down a motorway.
In the morning I telephoned Henry Glebe and he told me that the test was scheduled for 4 o’clock that afternoon. Shortly before this hour a little group assembled in the garden shed outside Glebe’s cottage. It consisted of myself, Glebe—looking, I felt, a trifle haggard—his son Bill, carrying a scale model of a sheep, and my publisher, wearing dark glasses. The last of these, when he saw me, started violently and buried his face in the collar of his coat. Glebe introduced him to me as the representative of a powerful industrial consortium interested in the commercial exploitation of the borer.
“Hello Ar—” I began, but my publisher interrupted in a stagey German accent.
“Could ve pleece prozeed mit the dest? My gumpany hass no dime doo vaist!”
He then pulled his hat low over his face, folded his arms and stepped back into the shadow. Glebe now removed the tarpaulin covering the machine and exposed it to view. I could not help feeling, at first glance, that it would prove inefficient. It had springs sticking out all over and was badly dented and buckled. Moreover, Glebe, as he explained apologetically before he started the test, had not been able to afford a proper motor and the pedal arrangement clearly supplied insufficient power. Glebe climbed into the machine, assured us that, in the production model, his head would not protrude as it now did, “causing unnecessary drag”, and then began to pedal. For several minutes, puffing heavily and turning rather purple, he continued to pedal. The screw at the front creaked slowly round. Then the screw suddenly fell off and Glebe, thrusting too hard now that the strain had been eased, plunged his foot through the fragile base of the borer. His son and I hastened to his aid and, in a few moments, managed to extricate him from the machine.
“Well,” he puffed, as soon as we had deposited him on the ground again, “not bad, eh? Not too bad for a—a trial run?”
Naturally I hastened to congratulate him, saying that it had been a most exciting experience and that, with a little smoothing out of details, there was no reason why the borer should not be a great success. Glebe beamed happily. Then his son, rather touchingly, presented him with the model of a sheep, saying that he’d wanted to give his father something to commemorate the occasion and that he’d constructed the animal in his spare time out of old milk cartons.
“It’s built to a scale of one in five,” he explained.
I noticed that my publisher was taking pictures of the borer with a spy camera built into his false nose. I once more approached him but he pushed me away and, calling out to Glebe that he’d submit a full report to his “gumpany”, he rushed out of the door.
That night, when I returned to my hotel, I was just in t
ime to see my publisher, still wearing dark glasses, hurrying across the lobby with his briefcase. I immediately accosted him:
“Look here, Simon—”
He drew back with a snarl.
“You haff made a mistake, zurr.”
“Aren’t you my publisher?”
“Publisher? Vot publisher? Leaf me in beece!”
At this I could restrain myself no longer and I snatched off his dark glasses. He immediately struck me a savage blow on the cheek and rushed out of the hotel.
The next day I returned to London and went immediately to my publisher’s office. As I was shown in, I heard him talking on the telephone:
“Yes, I was most impressed. Once it’s fully developed the thing will undoubtedly be worth millions. There’s just one slight—oh, hello, Clive!”
Seeing me, my publisher abruptly hung up the telephone. He gripped my hand and then, absently, opened one of his desk drawers and removed a plucked chicken from it.
“Geoffrey,” I said, quietly but with feeling, “I won’t naturally, bear a grudge but I’d like to know why you smote me in Bangor?”
“Good heavens!” exclaimed my publisher. “Look at this dreadful plucked chicken here in my desk drawer. Excuse me a moment, Clive.”
He rang for his secretary and, when she entered, sternly rebuked her for placing a plucked chicken in his desk drawer.
“This fowl,” he pointed out, “is in an early stage of putrefaction.”
The secretary gazed coldly at the bird for a moment and then grasped it around the neck.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she apologized. “It won’t happen again.”
“I hope not, Miss Plessent. Did you publish that book I asked you to, the one about pets?”
“I beg your pardon, sir, but you asked me to publish a book about dreams not pets.”
“Dreams!” cried my publisher and then appealed to me. “You see, Clive, what we’re up against?” Miss Plessent, we’ve already published two books about dreams this season. Really, you can trust me when I say that the market is ready for pets.”
“Quite possibly, sir. But nevertheless you told me—”