Lundi 09 mai 2011

our people

They shook hands. The Lord Mayor scowled and muttered something in Dr. Fe’s ear. “His Excellency says it is a great pleasure to welcome such illustrious guests. In the phrase of our people he says his house is yours.” The English stood aside and separated. Whitemaid had sighted a buffet at the far end of the tapestried hall. Scott-King stood diffidently alone; a footman brought him a glass of sweet effervescent wine. Dr. Fe brought him someone to talk to. “Allow me to present Engineer Garcia. He is an ardent lover of England.” “Engineer Garcia,” said the newcomer. “Scott-King,” said Scott-King. “I have work seven years with the firm Green, Gorridge and Wright Limited at Salford. You know them well, no doubt?” “I am afraid not.” “They are a very well-known firm, I think. Do you go often to Salford?” “I’m afraid I’ve never been there.” “It is a very well-known town. What, please, is your town?” “I suppose, Granchester.” “I am not knowing Granchester. It is a bigger town than Salford?” “No, much smaller.” “Ah. In Salford is much industry.” “So I believe.” “How do you find our Neutralian champagne?” “Excellent.” “It is sweet, eh? That is because of our Neutralian sun. You prefer it to the champagne of France?” “Well, it is quite different, isn’t it?” “I see you are a connoisseur. In France is no sun. Do you know the Duke of Westminster?” “No.” “I saw him once at Biarritz. A fine man. A man of great propriety.” “Indeed?” “Indeed. London is his propriety. Have you a propriety?” “No.” “My mother had a propriety but it is lost.” The clamour in the hall was tremendous. Scott-King found himself the centre of an English-speaking group. Fresh faces, new voices crowded in on him. His glass was repeatedly filled; it was over-filled and boiled and cascaded on his cuff. Dr. Fe passed and re-passed. “Ah, you have soon made friends.” He brought reinforcements; he brought more wine. “This is a special bottle,” he whispered. “Special for you, Professor,” and refilled Scott-King’s glass with the same sugary froth as before. The din swelled. The tapestried walls, the painted ceiling, the chandeliers, the gilded architrave, danced and dazzled before his eyes. Scott-King became conscious that Engineer Garcia was seeking to draw him into a more confidential quarter. “How do you find our country, Professor?” “Very pleasant, I assure you.” “Not how you expected it, eh? Your papers do not say it is pleasant. How is it allowed to scandalize our country? Your papers tell many lies about us.” “They tell lies about everyone, you know.” “Please?” “They tell lies about everyone,” shouted Scott-King. “Yes, lies. You see for yourself it is perfectly quiet.” “Perfectly quiet.” “How, please?” “Quiet,” yelled Scott-King. “You find it too quiet? It will become more gay soon. You are a writer?” “No, merely a poor scholar.” “How, poor? In England you are rich, no? Here we must work very hard for we are a poor country. In Neutralia for a scholar of the first class the salary is 500 ducats a month. The rent of his apartment is perhaps 450 ducats. His taxes are 100. Oil is 30 ducats a litre. Meat is 45 ducats a kilo. So you see, we work. “Dr. Fe is a scholar. He is also a lawyer, a judge of the Lower Court. He edits the Historical Review. He has a high position in the Ministry of Rest and Culture, also at the Foreign Office and the Bureau of Enlightenment and Tourism. He speaks often on the radio about the international situation. He owns one-third share in the Sporting Club. In all the New Neutralia I do not think there is anyone works harder than Dr. Fe, yet he is not rich as Mr. Green, Mr. Gorridge and Mr. Wright were rich in Salford. And they scarcely worked at all. There are injustices in the world, Professor.” “I think we must be quiet. The Lord Mayor wishes to make a speech.” “He is a man of no cultivation. A politician. They say his mother ...” “Hush.” “This speech will not be interesting, I believe.” Something like silence fell on the central part of the hall. The Lord Mayor had his speech ready typed on a sheaf of papers. He squinnied at it with his single eye and began haltingly to read. Scott-King slipped away. As though at a great distance he descried Whitemaid, alone at the buffet, and unsteadily made his way towards him. “Are you drunk?” whispered Whitemaid. “I don’t think so—just giddy. Exhaustion and the noise.” “I am drunk.” “Yes. I can see you are.” “How drunk would you say I was?” “Just drunk.” “My dear, my dear Scott-King, there if I may say so, you are wrong. In every degree and by every known standard I am very, very much more drunk than you give me credit for.” “Very well. But let’s not make a noise while the Mayor’s speaking.” “I do not profess to know very much Neutralian but it strikes me that the Mayor, as you call him, is talking the most consummate rot. What is more, I doubt very much that he is a mayor. Looks to me like a gangster.” “Merely a politician, I believe.” “That is worse.” “The essential, the immediate need is somewhere to sit down.” Though they were friends only of a day, Scott-King loved this man; they had suffered, were suffering, together; they spoke, preeminently, the same language; they were comrades in arms. He took Whitemaid by the arm and led him out of the hall to a cool and secluded landing where stood a little settee of gilt and plush, a thing not made for sitting on. Here they sat, the two dim men, while very faintly from behind them came the sound of oratory and applause. “They were putting it in their pockets,” said Whitemaid. “Who? What?” “The servants. The food. In the pockets of those long braided coats they wear. They were taking it away for their families. I got four macaroons.” And then swiftly veering he remarked: “She looks terrible.” “Miss Sveningen?” “That glorious creature. It was a terrible shock to see her when she came down changed for the party. It killed something here,” he said, touching his heart. “Don’t cry.” “I can’t help crying. You’ve seen her brown dress? And the hair ribbon? And the handkerchief?” “Yes, yes, I saw it all. And the belt.” “The belt,” said Whitemaid, “was more than flesh and blood could bear. Something snapped, here,” he said, touching his forehead. “You must remember how she looked in shorts? A Valkyrie. Something from the heroic age. Like some god-like, some unimaginably strict school prefect, a dormitory monitor,” he said in a kind of ecstasy. “Think of her striding between the beds, a pigtail, bare feet, in her hand a threatening hairbrush. Oh, Scott-King, do you think she rides a bicycle?” “I’m sure of it.” “In shorts?” “Certainly in shorts.” “I can imagine a whole life lived riding tandem behind her, through endless forests of conifers, and at midday sitting down among the pine needles to eat hard-boiled eggs. Think of those strong fingers peeling an egg, Scott-King, the brown of it, the white of it, the shine. Think of her biting it.” “Yes, it would be a splendid spectacle.” “And then think of her now, in there, in that brown dress.” “There are things not to be thought of, Whitemaid.” And Scott-King, too, shed a few tears of sympathy, of common sorrow in the ineffable, the cosmic sadness of Miss Sveningen’s party frock. “What is this?” said Dr. Fe, joining them some minutes later. “Tears? You are not enjoying it?” “It is only,” said Scott-King, “Miss Sveningen’s dress.” “This is tragic, yes. But in Neutralia we take such things bravely, with a laugh. I came, not to intrude, simply to ask, Professor, you have your little speech ready for this evening? We count on you at the banquet to say a few words.” For the banquet they returned to the Ritz. The foyer was empty save for Miss Bombaum who sat smoking a cigar with a man of repellent aspect. “I have had my dinner. I’m going out after a story,” she explained. It was half past ten when they sat down at a table spread with arabesques of flower-heads, petals, moss, trailing racemes and sprays of foliage until it resembled a parterre by Le Nôtre. Scott-King counted six wineglasses of various shapes standing before him amid the vegetation. A menu of enormous length, printed in gold, lay on his plate beside a typewritten place-card “Dr. Scotch-Kink.” Like many explorers before him, he found that prolonged absence from food destroyed the appetite. The waiters had already devoured the hors-d’oeuvre, but when at length the soup arrived, the first mouthful made him hiccup. This, too, he remembered, had befallen Captain Scott’s doomed party in the Antarctic. “Comment dit-on en français ‘hiccup’?” he asked his neighbour. “Plaît-il, mon professeur?” Scott-King hiccuped. “Ça,” he said. “Ça c’est le hoquet.” “J’en ai affreusement.” “Évidemment, mon professeur. Il faut du cognac.” The waiters had drunk and were drinking profusely of brandy and there was a bottle at hand. Scott-King tossed off a glassful and his affliction was doubled. He hiccuped without intermission throughout the long dinner. This neighbour, who had so ill-advised him, was, Scott-King saw from the card, Dr. Bogdan Antonic, the International Secretary of the Association, a middle-aged, gentle man whose face was lined with settled distress and weariness. They conversed, as far as the hiccups permitted, in French. “You are not Neutralian?” “Not yet. I hope to be. Every week I make my application to the Foreign Office and always I am told it will be next week. It is not so much for myself I am anxious—though death is a fearful thing—as for my family. I have seven children, all born in Neutralia, all without nationality. If we are sent back to my unhappy country they would hang us all without doubt.” “Yugoslavia?” “I am a Croat, born under the Hapsburg Empire. That was a true League of Nations. As a young man I studied in Zagreb, Budapest, Prague, Vienna—one was free, one moved where one would; one was a citizen of Europe. Then we were liberated and put under the Serbs. Now we are liberated again and put under the Russians. And always more police, more prisons, more hanging. My poor wife is Czech. Her nervous constitution is quite deranged by our troubles. She thinks all the time she is being watched.” Scott-King essayed one of those little, inarticulate, noncommittal grunts of sympathy which come easily to the embarrassed Englishman; to an Englishman, that is, who is not troubled by the hiccups. The sound which in the event issued from him might have been taken as derisive by a less sensitive man than Dr. Antonic. “I think so, too,” he said severely. “There are spies everywhere. You saw that man, as we came in, sitting with the woman with the cigar. He is one of them. I have been here ten years and know them all. I was second secretary to our Legation. It was a great thing, you must believe, for a Croat to enter our diplomatic service. All the appointments went to Serbs. Now there is no Legation. My salary has not been paid since 1940. I have a few friends at the Foreign Office. They are sometimes kind and give me employment, as at the present occasion. But at any moment they may make a trade agreement with the Russians and hand us over.” Scott-King attempted to reply.

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The Minister of Rest and Culture had a voice, never soft perhaps, now roughened by a career of street-corner harangues. He spoke at length and was succeeded by the venerable Rector of Bellacita University. Meanwhile Scott-King studied the books and leaflets provided for him, lavish productions of the Ministry of Popular Enlightenment—selected speeches by the Marshal, a monograph on Neutralian pre-History, an illustrated guide to the ski-ing resorts of the country, the annual report of the Corporation of Viticulture. Nothing seemed to have bearing upon the immediate situation except one, a polyglot programme of the coming celebrations. “17.00 hrs.,” he read. “Inauguration of the Ceremonies by the Minister of Rest and Culture. 18.00 hrs. Reception of delegates at the University of Bellacita. Official dress. 19.30 hrs. Vin d’honneur offered to the delegates of the Municipality of Bellacita. 21.00 hrs. Banquet offered by the Committee of the Bellorius Tercentenary Committee. Music by Bellacita Philharmonic Youth Squadron. Evening dress. Delegates will spend the night at the Hôtel 22nd March.” “Look,” said Whitemaid, “nothing to eat until nine o’clock and, mark my words, they will be late.” “In Neutralia,” said Dr. Arturo Fe, “in Neutralia, when we are happy, we take no account of time. Today we are very happy.” The Hôtel 22nd March was the name, derived from some forgotten event in the Marshal’s rise to power, by which the chief hotel of the place was momentarily graced. It had had as many official names in its time as the square in which it stood—the Royal, the Reform, the October Revolution, the Empire, the President Coolidge, the Duchess of Windsor—according to the humours of local history, but Neutralians invariably spoke of it quite simply as the “Ritz.” It rose amid subtropical vegetation, fountains and statuary, a solid structure, ornamented in the rococo style of fifty years ago. Neutralians of the upper class congregated there, sauntered about its ample corridors, sat in its comfortable foyer, used the concierge as a poste restante, borrowed small sums from its barmen, telephoned sometimes, gossiped always, now and then lightly dozed. They did not spend any money there. They could not afford to. The prices were fixed, and fixed high, by law; to them were added a series of baffling taxes—30 per cent for service, 2 per cent for stamp duty, 30 per cent for luxury tax, 5 per cent for the winter relief fund, 12 per cent for those mutilated in the revolution, 4 per cent municipal dues, 2 per cent federal tax, 8 per cent for living accommodation in excess of minimum requirements, and others of the same kind; they mounted up, they put the bedroom floors and the brilliant dining rooms beyond the reach of all but foreigners. There had been few in recent years; official hospitality alone flourished at the Ritz; but still the sombre circle of Neutralian male aristocracy—for, in spite of numberless revolutions and the gross dissemination of free thought, Neutralian ladies still modestly kept the house—foregathered there; it was their club. They wore very dark suits and very stiff collars, black ties, black buttoned boots; they smoked their cigarettes in long tortoiseshell holders; their faces were brown and wizened; they spoke of money and women, dryly and distantly, for they had never enough of either. On this afternoon of summer when the traditional Bellacita season was in its last week and they were all preparing to remove to the seaside or to their family estates, about twenty of these descendants of the crusaders sat in the cool of the Ritz lounge. They were rewarded first by the spectacle of the foreign professors’ arrival from the Ministry of Rest and Culture. Already they seemed hot and weary; they had come to fetch their academic dress for the reception at the University. The last-comers—Scott-King, Whitemaid, Miss Sveningen and Miss Bombaum—had lost their luggage. Dr. Arturo Fe was like a flame at the reception desk; he pleaded, he threatened, he telephoned. Some said the luggage was impounded at the customs, others that the taxi driver had stolen it. Presently it was discovered in a service lift abandoned on the top storey. At last Dr. Fe assembled his scholars, Scott-King in his M.A. gown and hood, Whitemaid, more flamboyantly, in the robes of his new doctorate of Upsala. Among the vestments of many seats of learning, some reminiscent of Daumier’s law courts, some of Mr. Will Hay of the music-hall stage, Miss Sveningen stood conspicuous in sports dress of zephyr and white shorts. Miss Bombaum refused to go. She had a story to file, she said. The party trailed out through the swing doors into the dusty evening heat, leaving the noblemen to compare their impressions of Miss Sveningen’s legs. The subject was not exhausted when they returned; indeed, had it risen earlier in the year it would have served as staple conversation for the whole Bellacita season. The visit to the University had been severe, an hour of speeches followed by a detailed survey of the archives. “Miss Sveningen, gentlemen,” said Dr. Fe. “We are a little behind. The Municipality is already awaiting us. I shall telephone them that we are delayed. Do not put yourselves out.” The party dispersed to their rooms and reassembled in due time dressed in varying degrees of elegance. Dr. Fe was splendid, tight white waistcoat, onyx buttons, a gardenia, half a dozen miniature medals, a kind of sash. Scott-King and Whitemaid seemed definitely seedy beside him. But the little brown marquesses and counts had no eye for these things. They were waiting for Miss Sveningen. If her academic dress had exposed such uncovenanted mercies, such superb, such unpredictable expanses and lengths of flesh, what would she not show them when gowned for the evening? She came. Chocolate-coloured silk enveloped her from collar-bone to humerus and hung to within a foot of the ground; low-heeled black satin shoes covered feet which seemed now unusually large. She had bound a tartan fillet in her hair. She wore a broad patent-leather belt. She had a handkerchief artfully attached to her wrist by her watch-strap. For perhaps a minute the inky, simian eyes regarded her aghast; then, one by one, with the languor born of centuries of hereditary disillusionment, the Knights of Malta rose from their places and sauntered with many nods to the bowing footmen towards the swing doors, towards the breathless square, towards the subdivided palaces where their wives awaited them. “Come, lady and gentlemen,” said Dr. Arturo Fe. “The cars are here. We are eagerly expected at the Hôtel de Ville.” No paunch, no jowl, no ponderous dignity of the countinghouse or of civic office, no hint indeed of pomp or affluence, marked the Lord Mayor of Bellacita. He was young, lean and plainly ill at ease; he was much scarred by his revolutionary exploits, wore a patch on one eye and supported himself on a crutch-stick. “His Excellency, alas, does not speak English,” said Dr. Fe as he presented Scott-King and Whitemaid.
Par lilyshanxu - 0 commentaire(s)le 09 mai 2011

proposed by Mr. John Plant

It was a topic; a topic dry, scentless and colourless as a pressed flower; a topic on which, in the school debating society, one had despaired of finding anything new to say—“The motion before the House is that too much kindness is shown to animals, proposed by Mr. John Plant, Headmaster’s House”—nevertheless, it was something to talk about. “The animals are paid for their entertainment value,” I said. “We don’t send out hampers to monkeys in their own forests.”—Or did we? There was no knowing what humane ladies in England would not do—“We bring the monkeys here to amuse us.” “What’s amusing about that black creature there?” “Well, he’s very beautiful.” “Beautiful?” Atwater stared into the hostile little face beyond the bars. “Can’t see it myself.” Then rather truculently, “I suppose you’d say he was more beautiful than me.” “Well, as a matter of fact, since you raise the point ...” “You think that thing beautiful and feed it and shelter it, while you leave me to starve.” This seemed unfair. I had just given Atwater a pound; moreover, it was not I who had fed the ape. I pointed this out. “I see,” said Atwater. “You’re paying me for my entertainment value. You think I’m a kind of monkey.” This was uncomfortably near the truth. “You misunderstand me,” I said. “I hope I do. A remark like that would start a roughhouse at the Wimpole.” A new and glorious idea came to me. “Atwater,” I said, cautiously for his oppressed mood was still on him. “Please do not take offence at my suggestion but, supposing I were to pay—as a loan, of course—would it be possible for us, do you think, to lunch at the Wimpole?” He took the suggestion quite well. “I’ll be frank with you,” he said. “I haven’t paid this month’s sub yet. It’s seven and sixpence.” “We’ll include that in the loan.” “Good scout. I know you’ll like the place.” The taxi driver, to whom I gave the address “Wimpole Club,” was nonplussed. “Now you’ve got me,” he said. “I thought I knew them all. It’s not what used to be called the ‘Palm Beach’?” “No,” said Atwater, and gave more exact directions. We drove to a mews off Wimpole Street. (“It’s handy for chaps in the motor business Great Portland Street way,” said Atwater.) “By the way, I may as well explain, I’m known as Norton at the club.” “Why?” “Lots of the chaps there use a different name. I expect it’s the same at your club.” “I shouldn’t be surprised,” I said. I paid the taxi. Atwater kicked open a green door and led me into the hall where a porter, behind the counter, was lunching off tea and sandwiches. “I’ve been out of town,” said Atwater. “Just dropped in to pay my subscription. Anyone about?” “Very quiet,” said the porter. The room into which he led me was entirely empty. It was at once bar, lounge and dining room, but mostly bar, for which a kind of film-set had been erected, built far into the room, with oak rafters, a thatched roof, a wrought iron lantern and an inn-sign painted in mock heraldry with quartered bottles and tankards. “Please don’t take this wrong,” I said, “but I’m really interested to know what was the resemblance you saw between your club and the room where we talked in mine?” “You can’t compare them really, can you? I just didn’t want to seem snooty. Jim!” “Sir.” A head appeared above the bar. “Well, Mr. Norton, we haven’t seen you for a long time. I was just having my bit of dinner.” “May I interrupt that important function and give my friend here something in the nature of a snorter.”—This was a new and greatly expanded version of Atwater the good scout—“Two of your specials, please, Jim.” To me, “Jim’s specials are famous.” To Jim, “This is one of my best pals, Mr. Plant.” To me, “There’s not much Jim doesn’t know about me.” To Jim, “Where’s the gang?” “They don’t seem to come here like they did, Mr. Norton. There’s not the money about.” “You’ve said it.” Jim put two cocktails on the bar before us. “I presume, Jim, that since this is Mr. Plant’s first time among us, in pursuance of the old Wimpole custom, these are on the house?” Jim laughed rather anxiously. “Mr. Norton likes his joke.” “Joke? Jim, you shame me before my friends. But never fear. I have found a rich backer; if we aren’t having this with you, you must have one with us.” The barman poured himself out something from a bottle which he kept for the purpose on a shelf below the bar, and said, “First today,” as we toasted one another. Atwater said, “It’s one of the mysteries of the club what Jim keeps in that bottle of his.” I knew; it was what every barman kept, cold tea, but I thought it would spoil Atwater’s treat if I told him. Jim’s “special” was strong and agreeable. “Is it all right for me to order a round?” I asked. “It’s more than all right. It’s perfect.” Jim shook up another cocktail and refilled his own glass. “D’you remember the time I drank twelve of your specials before dinner with Mr. Appleby?” “I do, sir.” “A tiny bit spifflicated that night, eh, Jim?” “A tiny bit, sir.” We had further rounds; Jim took cash for the drinks; three shillings a time. After the first round, when Atwater broke into his pound note, I paid. Every other time he said, “Chalk it up to the national debt,” or some similar reference to the fiction of our loan. Soon Jim and Atwater were deep in reminiscence of Atwater’s past. After a time I found my thoughts wandering and went to telephone to Victoria Square. Roger answered. “It seems things are coming more or less normally,” he said. “How is she?” “I haven’t been in. The doctor’s here now, in a white coat like an umpire. He keeps saying I’m not to worry.” “But is she in danger?” “Of course she is, it’s a dangerous business.” “But I mean, more than most people?” “Yes. No. I don’t know. They said everything was quite normal whatever that means.” “I suppose it means she’s not in more danger than most people.” “I suppose so.” “Does it bore you my ringing up to ask?” “No, not really. Where are you?” “At a club called the Wimpole.” “Never heard of it.” “No. I’ll tell you about it later. Very interesting.” “Good. Do tell me later.” I returned to the bar. “I thought our old comrade had passed out on us,” said Atwater. “Been sick?” “Good heavens, no.” “You look a terrible colour, doesn’t he, Jim? Perhaps a special is what he needs. I was sick that night old Grainger sold his Bentley, sick as a dog.” ... When I had spent about thirty shillings Jim began to tire of his cold tea. “Why don’t you gentlemen sit down at a table and let me order you a nice grill?” he asked. “All in good time, Jim, all in good time. Mr. Plant here would like one of your specials first just to give him an appetite, and I think rather than see an old pal drink alone, I’ll join him.” Later, when we were very drunk, steaks appeared which neither of us remembered ordering. We ate them at the bar with, at Jim’s advice, great quantities of Worcester sauce. Our conversation, I think, was mainly about Appleby and the need of finding him. We rang up one or two people of that name, whom we found in the telephone book, but they disclaimed all knowledge of Jesuit treasure. It must have been four o’clock in the afternoon when we left the Wimpole. Atwater was more drunk than I. Next day I remembered most of our conversation verbatim. In the mews I asked him: “Where are you living?” “Digs. Awful hole. But it’s all right now I’ve got money—I can sleep on the embankment. Police won’t let you sleep on the embankment unless you’ve got money. Vagrancy. One law for the rich, one for the poor. Iniquitous system.” “Why don’t you come and live with me. I’ve got a house in the country, plenty of room. Stay as long as you like. Die there.” “Thanks, I will. Must go to the embankment first and pack.” And we separated, for the time, he sauntering unsteadily along Wimpole Street, past the rows of brass plates, I driving in a taxi to my rooms in Ebury Street where I undressed, folded my clothes and went quietly to bed. I awoke, in the dark, hours later, in confusion as to where I was and how I had got there. The telephone was ringing next door in my sitting room. It was Roger. He said that Lucy had had a son two hours ago; he had been ringing up relatives ever since; she was perfectly well; the first thing she had asked for when she came round from the chloroform was a cigarette. “I feel like going out and getting drunk,” said Roger. “Don’t you?” “No,” I said. “No, I’m afraid not,” and returned to bed.

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Yes, that and punctuality. I’m punctual too. It’s a curious thing because you see, actually, though I don’t make any fuss about it in the position I’m in, I’m descended from Henry VII.” There seemed no suitable answer to this piece of information so, since I was silent, he added suddenly, “I say, you do remember me, don’t you?” “Vividly.” He came closer and leant beside me on the rail which separated us from the cage. It was as though we stood on board ship and were looking out to sea, only instead of the passing waters we saw the solitary, still person of Humboldt’s Gibbon. “I don’t mind telling you,” said Atwater, “I’ve had a pretty thin time of it since we last met.” “I saw you were acquitted at the trial. I thought you were very fortunate.” “Fortunate! You should have heard the things the beak said. Things he had no right to say and wouldn’t have dared say to a rich man, and said in a very nasty way, too—things I shan’t forget in a hurry. Mr. Justice Longworth—Justice, that’s funny. Acquitted without a stain!—innocent! Does that give me back my job?” “But I understood from the evidence at the trial that you were under notice to go anyway.” “Yes. And why? Because sales were dropping. Why should I sell their beastly stockings for them anyway? Money—that’s all anyone cares about now. And I’m beginning to feel the same way. When do you suppose I had my last meal—my last square meal?” “I’ve really no idea, I’m afraid.” “Tuesday. I’m hungry, Plant—literally hungry.” “You could have saved yourself the sixpence admission here, couldn’t you?” “I’m a Fellow,” said Atwater with surprising readiness. “Oh.” “You don’t believe that, do you?” “I have no reason not to.” “I can prove it; look here—Fellow’s tickets, two of them.” He produced and pressed on my attention two tickets of admission signed in a thin, feminine hand. “My dear Atwater,” I said, “these don’t make you a Fellow; they’ve merely been given you by someone who is—not that it matters.” “Not that it matters! Let me tell you this: D’you know who gave me these?—the mother of a chap I know; chap I know well. I dropped round to see him the other evening, at the address I found in the telephone book. It was his mother’s house as it happened. My pal was abroad. But, anyway, I got talking to the mother and told her about how I was placed and what pals her son and I had been. She seemed a decent old bird. At the end she said, ‘How very sad. Do let me give you something,’ and began fumbling in her bag. I thought at least a quid was coming, and what did she give me? These tickets for the Zoo. I ask you!” “Well,” I said, with a tone as encouraging as I could manage, for it did seem to me that in this instance he had been unfairly disappointed, “the Zoo is a very pleasant place.” At this suggestion Atwater showed one of those mercurial changes of mood which later became familiar to me but which, at this stage of our acquaintance, I found rather disconcerting, from resentment to simple enthusiasm. “It’s wonderful,” he said, “there’s nothing like it. All these animals from all over the world brought here to London. Think what they’ve seen—forests and rivers, places probably where no white man’s ever been. It makes you long to get away, doesn’t it? Think of paddling your canoe upstream in undiscovered country, with strings of orchids overhead and parrots in the trees and great butterflies, and native servants, and hanging your hammock in the open at night and starting off in the morning with no one to worry you, living on fish and fruit—that’s life,” said Atwater. Once again I felt impelled to correct his misconceptions of colonial life. “If you are still thinking of settling in Rhodesia,” I said, “I must warn you you will find conditions very different from those you describe.” “Rhodesia’s off,” said Atwater. “I’ve other plans.” He told me of them at length, and because they distracted me from thinking of Lucy, I listened gratefully. They depended, primarily, on his finding a man of his acquaintance—a good scout named Appleby—who had lately disappeared as so many of Atwater’s associates seemed to have done, leaving no indication of his whereabouts. Appleby knew of a cave in Bolivia where the Jesuits, in bygone years, had stored their treasure. When they were driven out, they put a curse on the place, so that the superstitious natives left the hoard inviolate. Appleby had old parchments which made the matter clear. More than this Appleby had an aerial photograph of the locality, and by a special process known to himself, was able to treat the plate so that auriferous ground came out dark; the hill where the Jesuits had left their treasure was almost solid black; the few white spots indicated chests of jewels and, possibly, bar platinum. “Appleby’s idea was to collect ten stout fellows who would put up a hundred quid each for our fares and digging expenses. I’d have gone like a shot. Had it all fixed up. The only snag was that just at that time I couldn’t put my hands on a hundred quid.” “Did the expedition ever start?” “I don’t think so. You see a lot of the chaps were in the same position. Besides old Appleby would never start without me. He’s a good scout. If I only knew where he hung out I should be all right.” “Where used he to hang out?” “You could always find him at the old Wimpole. He was what our barman called one of the regulars.” “Surely they would know his address there?” I kept talking. As long as I was learning about old Appleby I had only half my mind for Lucy. “Well, you see the Wimpole’s rather free and easy in some ways. As long as you’re a good chap you’re taken as you come and no questions asked. Subs are paid by the month; you know the kind of place. If you’re shy of the ante, as we used to call it, the doorman doesn’t let you in.” “And old Appleby was shy of the ante?” “That’s it. It wasn’t a thing to worry about. Most of the chaps one time or another have been shown the door. I expect it’s the same at your club. No disgrace attached. But old Appleby’s a bit touchy and began telling off the doorman good and proper and then the secretary butted in and, to cut a long story short, there was something of a shemozzle.” “Yes,” I said, “I see.” And even as I spoke all interest in Appleby’s shemozzle faded completely away and I thought of Lucy, lying at home in tears, waiting for her pain. “For God’s sake tell me some more,” I said. “More about Appleby?” “More about anything. Tell me about all the chaps in the Wimpole. Tell me their names one by one and exactly what they look like. Tell me your family history. Tell me the full details of every job you have ever lost. Tell me all the funny stories you have ever heard. Tell my fortune. Don’t you see, I want to be told?” “I don’t quite twig,” said Atwater. “But if you are trying to hint that I’m boring you ...” “Atwater,” I said earnestly, “I will give you a pound just to talk to me. Here it is, look, take it. There. Does that look as though I was bored?” “It looks to me as though you were barmy,” said Atwater, pocketing the note. “Much obliged all the same. It’ll come in handy just at the moment, only as a loan, mind.” “Only as a loan,” I said, and we both of us lapsed into silence, he, no doubt, thinking of my barminess, I of Lucy. The black ape walked slowly round his cage raking the sawdust and nut shells with the back of his hand, looking vainly for some neglected morsel of food. Presently there was an excited scurry in the cage next to us; two women had appeared with a bunch of bananas. “Excuse me, please,” they said and pushed in front of us to feed Humboldt’s Gibbon; then they passed on to the grey sycophant beyond, and so down all the cages until their bag was empty. “Where shall we go now?” one of them said. “I don’t see the point of animals you aren’t allowed to feed.” Atwater overheard this remark; it worked in his mind so that by the time they had left the monkey house, he was in another mood. Atwater the dreamer, Atwater the good scout, and Atwater the underdog seemed to appear in more or less regular sequence. It was Atwater the good scout I liked best, but one clearly had to take him as he came. “Feeding animals while men and women starve,” he said bitterly.
Par lilyshanxu - 0 commentaire(s)le 09 mai 2011

living in his lodge

The house we had come to see proved, like so many others, to be quite uninhabitable. Its owner, in fact, was living in his lodge. “Too big for me these days,” he said of the house which, when he opened it to us, gave the impression of having been designed as a small villa and wantonly extended, as though no one had remembered to tell the workmen when to stop and they had gone on adding room to room like cells in a wasp-nest. “I never had the money to spend on it,” the owner said gloomily, “you could make something of it with a little money.” We went upstairs and along a lightless passage. He had been showing people over this house since 1920, he said, and with the years he had adopted a regular patter. “Nice little room this, very warm in the winter..... You get a good view of the downs here, if you stand in the corner..... It’s a dry house. You can see that. I’ve never had any trouble with damp..... These used to be the nurseries. They’d make a nice suite of spare bedroom, dressing room and bath if you didn’t ...” and at that point, remembering Lucy, he stopped abruptly and in such embarrassment that he scarcely spoke until we left him. “I’ll write to you,” I said. “Yes,” he said with great gloom, knowing what I meant, “I sometimes think the place might do as a school. It’s very healthy.” So we drove back to Lucy’s relatives. They wanted her to dine in bed or, anyway, to go to her room and lie down until dinner. Instead she came out with me into the evening sunlight and we sat in what Lucy’s relatives called their “blue garden,” reconstructing a life history of the sad little man who had shown us his house. Lucy’s relatives thought us and our presence there and our whole expedition extremely odd. There was something going on, they felt, which they did not understand, and Lucy and I, infected by the atmosphere, became, as it were, confederates in this house which she had known all her life, in the garden where, as a little girl, she had once, she told me, buried a dead starling, with tears. After this expedition Lucy remained in London, spending more and more of her time indoors. When I finally found a house to suit me, I was alone. “You might have waited,” said Lucy. It seemed quite natural that she should reproach me. She had a share in my house. “Damn this baby,” she added. III In the last week before the birth of her child, Lucy began for the first time to betray impatience; she was never, at any time, at all apprehensive—merely bored and weary and vexed, past bearing, by the nurse who had now taken up residence in the house. Roger and Miss Meikeljohn had made up their minds that she was going to die. “It’s all this damned prenatal care,” said Roger. “Do you realize that maternal mortality is higher in this country than it’s ever been? D’you know there are cases of women going completely bald after childbirth? And permanently insane? It’s worse among the rich than the poor, too.” Miss Meikeljohn said: “Lucy’s being so wonderful. She doesn’t realize.” The nurse occupied herself with extravagant shopping lists; “Does everyone have to have all these things?” Lucy asked, aghast at the multitude of medical and nursery supplies which began to pour into the house. “Everyone who can afford them,” said Sister Kemp briskly, unconscious of irony. Roger found some comfort in generalizing. “It’s anthropologically very interesting,” he said, “all this purely ceremonial accumulation of rubbish—like turtle doves brought to the gates of a temple. Everyone according to his means sacrificing to the racial god of hygiene.” He showed remarkable forbearance to Sister Kemp, who brought with her an atmosphere of impending doom and accepted a cocktail every evening, saying, “I’m not really on duty yet,” or “No time for this after the day.” She watched confidently for The Day, her apotheosis, when Lucy would have no need for Roger or me or Miss Meikeljohn, only for herself. “I shall call you Mrs. Simmonds until The Day,” she said. “After that you will be my Lucy.” She sat about with us in the drawing room, and in Lucy’s bedroom where we spent most of the day, now; like an alien, sitting at a café; an alien anarchist, with a bomb beside him, watching the passing life of a foreign city, waiting for his signal from the higher powers, the password which might come at once or in a very few days, whispered in his ear, perhaps, by the waiter, or scrawled on the corner of his evening newspaper—the signal that the hour of liberation had come when he would take possession of all he beheld. “The fathers need nearly as much care as the mothers,” said Sister Kemp. “No, not another thank you, Mr. Simmonds. I’ve got to keep in readiness, you know. It would never do if baby came knocking at the door and found Sister unable to lift the latch.” “No,” said Roger. “No, I suppose it wouldn’t.” Sister Kemp belonged to a particularly select and highly paid corps of nurses. A baby wheeled out by her, as it would be daily for the first month, would have access to certain paths in the Park where inferior nurses trespassed at the risk of cold looks. Lucy’s perambulator would thus be socially established and the regular nurse, when she took over, would find her charge already well known and respected. Sister Kemp explained this, adding as a concession to Lucy’s political opinions, “The snobbery among nurses is terrible. I’ve seen many a girl go home from Stanhope Gate in tears.” And then, esprit de corps asserting itself, “Of course, they ought to have known. There’s always Kensington Gardens for them.”

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That at least is how, in those earliest days, I explained my obsession to myself, but looking at it now, down the long, mirrored corridor of cumulative emotion, I see no beginning to the perspective. There is in the apprehension of woman’s beauty an exquisite, early intimation of loveliness when, seeing some face, strange or familiar, one gains, suddenly, a further glimpse and foresees, out of a thousand possible futures, how it might be transfigured by love; the vision is often momentary and transient, never to return in waking life, or else precipitately succeeded by the reality, and so forgotten. With Lucy—her grace daily more encumbered by her pregnancy; deprived of sex, as women are, by its own fulfilment—the vision was extended and clarified until, with no perceptible transition, it became the reality. But I cannot say when it first appeared. Perhaps, that evening, when she said, about the Composed Hermitage in the Chinese Taste, “I can’t think why John should want to have a house like that,” but it came without surprise; I had sensed it on its way, as an animal, still in profound darkness and surrounded by all the sounds of night, will lift its head, sniff, and know, inwardly, that dawn is near. Meanwhile, I moved for advantage as in a parlour game. Julia brought me success. Our meeting, so far from disillusioning her, made her cult of me keener and more direct. It was no fault of mine, I assured Roger, when he came to grumble about it; I had not been in the least agreeable to her; indeed towards the end of the evening I had been openly savage. “The girl’s a masochist,” he said, adding with deeper gloom, “and Lucy says she’s a virgin.” “There’s plenty of time for her. The two troubles are often cured simultaneously.” “That’s all very well, but she’s staying another ten days. She never stops talking about you.” “Does Lucy mind?” “Of course she minds. It’s driving us both nuts. Does she write you a lot of letters?” “Yes.” “What does she say?” “I don’t read them. I feel as though they were meant for somebody else. Besides they’re in pencil.” “I expect she writes them in bed. No one’s ever gone for me like that.” “Nor for me,” I said. “It’s not really at all disagreeable.” “I daresay not,” said Roger. “I thought only actors and sex-novelists and clergymen came in for it.” “No, no, anybody may—scientists, politicians, professional cyclists—anyone whose name gets into the papers. It’s just that young girls are naturally religious.” “Julia’s eighteen.” “She’ll get over it soon. She’s been stirred up by suddenly meeting me in the flesh after two or three years’ distant devotion. She’s a nice child.” “That’s all very well,” said Roger, returning sulkily to his original point. “It isn’t Julia I’m worried about, it’s ourselves, Lucy and me—she’s staying another ten days. Lucy says you’ve got to be nice about it, and come out this evening, the four of us. I’m sorry, but there it is.” So for a week I went often to Victoria Square, and there was the beginning of a half-secret joke between Lucy and me in Julia’s devotion. While I was there Julia sat smug and gay; she was a child of enchanting prettiness; when I was absent, Roger told me, she moped a good deal and spent much time in her bedroom writing and destroying letters to me. She talked about herself, mostly, and her sister and family. Her father was a major and they lived at Aldershot; they would have to stay there all the year round now that Lucy no longer needed their company in London. She did not like Roger. “He’s not very nice about you,” she said. “Roger and I are like that,” I explained. “We’re always foul about each other. It’s our fun. Is Lucy nice about me?” “Lucy’s an angel,” said Julia, “that’s why we hate Roger so.” Finally there was the evening of Julia’s last party. Eight of us went to dance at a restaurant. Julia was at first very gay, but her spirits dropped towards the end of the evening. I was living in Ebury Street; it was easy for me to walk home from Victoria Square, so I went back with them and had a last drink. “Lucy’s promised to leave us alone, just for a minute, to say good-bye,” Julia whispered. When we were alone, she said, “It’s been absolutely wonderful the last two weeks. I didn’t know it was possible to be so happy. I wish you’d give me something as a kind of souvenir.” “Of course. I’ll send you one of my books, shall I?” “No,” she said, “I’m not interested in your books any more. At least, of course, I am, terribly, but I mean it’s you I love.” “Nonsense,” I said. “Will you kiss me, once, just to say good-bye.” “Certainly not.” Then she said suddenly, “You’re in love with Lucy, aren’t you?” “Good heavens, no. What on earth put that into your head?” “I can tell. Through loving you so much, I expect. You may not know it, but you are. And it’s no good. She loves that horrid Roger. Oh, dear, they’re coming back. I’ll come and say good-bye to you tomorrow, may I?” “No.” “Please. This hasn’t been how I planned it at all.” Then Roger and Lucy came into the room with a sly look as though they had been discussing what was going on and how long they should give us. So I shook hands with Julia and went home. She came to my rooms at ten next morning. Mrs. Legge, the landlady, showed her up. She stood in the door, swinging a small parcel. “I’ve got five minutes,” she said, “the taxi’s waiting. I told Lucy I had some last-minute shopping.” “You know you oughtn’t to do this sort of thing.” “I’ve been here before. When I knew you were out. I pretended I was your sister and had come to fetch something for you.” “Mrs. Legge never said anything to me about it.” “No. I asked her not to. In fact I gave her ten shillings. You see she caught me at it.” “At what?” “Well, it sounds rather silly. I was in your bedroom, kissing things—you know, pillows, pajamas, hair brushes. I’d just got to the washstand and was kissing your razor when I looked up and found Mrs. Whatever-she’s-called standing in the door.” “Good God, I shall never be able to look her in the face again.” “Oh, she was quite sympathetic. I suppose I must have looked funny, like a goose grazing.” She gave a little, rather hysterical giggle, and added, “Oh, John, I do love you so.” “Nonsense. I shall turn you out if you talk like that.” “Well, I do. And I’ve got you a present.” She gave me the square parcel. “Open it.” “I shan’t accept it,” I said unwrapping a box of cigars. “But you must. You see, they’d be no good to me, would they? Are they good ones?” “Yes,” I said, looking at the box. “Very good ones indeed.” “The best?” “Quite the best, but ...” “That’s what the man in the shop said. Smoke one now.” “Julia dear, I couldn’t. I’ve only just finished breakfast.” She saw the point of that. “When will you smoke the first one? After luncheon? I’d like to think of you smoking the first one.” “Julia, dear, it’s perfectly sweet of you, but I can’t, honestly ...” “I know what you’re thinking, that I can’t afford it. Well, that’s all right. You see, Lucy gave me five pounds yesterday to buy a hat. I thought she would—she often does. But I had to wait and be sure. I’d got them ready, hidden yesterday evening. I meant to give you them then. But I never got a proper chance. So here they are.” And then, as I hesitated, with rising voice, “Don’t you see I’d much rather give you cigars than have a new hat? Don’t you see I shall go back to Aldershot absolutely miserable, the whole time in London quite spoilt, if you won’t take them?” She had clearly been crying that morning and was near tears again. “Of course I’ll take them,” I said. “I think it’s perfectly sweet of you.” Her face cleared in sudden, infectious joy. “There. Now we can say good-bye.” She stood waiting for me, not petitioning this time, but claiming her right. I put my hands on her shoulders and gave her a single, warm kiss on the lips. She shut her eyes and sighed. “Thank you,” she said in a small voice, and hurried out to her waiting taxi, leaving the box of cigars on my table. Sweet Julia! I thought; it was a supremely unselfish present; something quite impersonal and unsentimental—no keepsake—something which would be gone, literally in smoke, in less than six weeks; a thing she had not even the fun of choosing for herself; she had gone to the counter and left it to the shopman—“I want a box of the best cigars you keep, please—as many as I can get for five pounds.” She just wanted something which she could be sure would give pleasure. And chiefly because she thought I had been kind to her cousin, Lucy took me into her friendship. Roger’s engraving showed a pavilion, still rigidly orthodox in plan, but, in elevation decked with ornament conceived in a wild ignorance of oriental forms; there were balconies and balustrades of geometric patterns; the cornice swerved upwards at the corners in the lines of a pagoda; the roof was crowned with an onion cupola which might have been Russian, bells hung from the capitals of barley-sugar columns; the windows were freely derived from the Alhambra; there was a minaret. To complete the atmosphere the engraver had added a little group of Turkish military performing the bastinado upon a curiously complacent malefactor, an Arabian camel and a mandarin carrying a bird in a cage. “My word, what a gem,” they said. “Is it really all there?” “The minaret’s down and it’s all rather overgrown.” “What a chance. John must get it.” “It will be fun to furnish. I know just the chairs for it.” This was the first time I had been to Victoria Square since Julia left. And Lucy said, “I can’t think why John should want to have a house like that.” II Lucy was a girl of few friends; she had, in fact, at the time I was admitted to their number, only two; a man named Peter Baverstock, in the Malay States, whom I never saw, and a Miss Muriel Meikeljohn whom I saw all too often. Peter Baverstock had wanted to marry Lucy since she was seven and proposed to her whenever he came home on leave, every eighteen months, until she married Roger, when he sent her a very elaborate wedding present, an immense thing in carved wood, ivory and gilt which caused much speculation with regard to its purpose; later he wrote and explained; I forget the explanation. I think it was the gift which, by local usage, men of high birth gave to their granddaughters when they were delivered of male twins; it was, anyway, connected with twins and grandparents, of great rarity, and a token of high esteem in the parts he came from. Lucy wrote long letters to Baverstock every fortnight. I often watched her at work on those letters, sitting square to her table, head bowed, hand travelling evenly across the page, as, I remembered reading in some books of memoirs, Sir Walter Scott’s had been seen at a lighted window, writing the Waverley novels. It was a tradition of her upbringing that letters for the East must always be written on very thin, lined paper. “I’m just telling Peter about your house,” she would say. “How can that possibly interest him?”
Par lilyshanxu - 0 commentaire(s)le 09 mai 2011

wrong dish by mistake

Roger always showed signs of persecution-mania in the Ritz. He did not like it when we knew people at other tables whom he didn’t know and, when the waiter brought him the wrong dish by mistake, he began on a set-piece which I had heard him use before in this same place. “Fashionable restaurants are the same all over the world,” he said. “There are always exactly twenty per cent more tables than the waiters can manage. It’s a very good thing for the workers’ cause that no one except the rich know the deficiencies of the luxury world. Think of the idea Hollywood gives of a place like this,” he said, warming to his subject. “A maître d’hôtel like an ambassador, bowing famous beauties across acres of unencumbered carpet—and look at poor Lorenzo there, sweating under his collar, jostling a way through for dowdy Middle West Americans ...” But it was not a success. Lucy, I could see, thought it odd of him to complain when he was a guest. I pointed out that the couple whom Roger condemned as Middle West Americans were in fact called Lord and Lady Settringham, and Andrew led the conversation, where Roger could not follow it, to the topic of which ambassadors looked like maîtres d’hôtel. The woman-novelist began a eulogy of the Middle West which she knew and Roger did not. So he was left with his theme undeveloped. All this was worth five pounds to me, and more. I thought it typical of the way Lucy had been brought up that she returned my invitation in a day or two. Roger got in first on the telephone. “I say, are you free on Wednesday evening?” “I’m not sure. Why?” “I wondered if you’d dine with us.” “Not at half past six for the Finsbury Theatre?” “No. I work late these days at the Red China Supply Committee.” “What time then?” “Oh, any time after eight. Dress or not, just as you feel like it.” “What will you and Lucy be doing?” “Well, I suppose we shall dress. In case anyone wants to go on anywhere.” “In fact, it’s a dinner party?” “Well, yes, in a kind of way.” It was plain that poor Roger was dismayed at this social mushroom which had sprung up under his nose. As a face-saver the telephone call was misconceived, for a little note from Lucy was already in the post for me. It was not for me to mock these little notes; I had begun it. But an end had to be made to them, so I decided to answer this by telephone, choosing the early afternoon when I assumed Roger would be out. He was in, and answered me. “I wanted to speak to Lucy.” “Yes?” “Just to accept her invitation to dinner.” “But you’ve already accepted.” “Yes, but I thought I’d better just tell her.” “I told her. What d’you think?” “Ah, good, I was afraid you might have forgotten.” I had come badly out of that. From first to last the whole episode of the dinner was calamitous. It was a party of ten, and one glance round the room showed me that this was an occasion of what Lucy had been brought up to call “duty.” That is to say, we were all people whom for one reason or another she had felt obliged to ask. She was offering us all up together in a single propitiatory holocaust to the gods of the schoolroom. Even Mr. Benwell was there. He did not realize that Lucy had taken the house furnished and was congratulating her upon the decorations; “I like a London house to look like a London house,” he was saying. Roger was carrying things off rather splendidly with a kind of sardonic gusto which he could often assume in times of stress. I knew him in that mood and respected it. I knew, too, that my presence added a particular zest to his performance. Throughout the evening I caught him in constant enquiry of me; was I attending to this parody of himself? I was his audience, not Lucy. The fate in store for myself was manifest as soon as I came into the room. It was Lucy’s cousin Julia, the younger of the two girls Basil had told me of, the one whose début had been so disturbed by Lucy’s marriage. It would not, I felt, be a grave setback. Julia had that particular kind of succulent charm—bright, dotty, soft, eager, acquiescent, flattering, impudent—that is specially, it seems, produced for the delight of Anglo-Saxon manhood. She had no need of a London season to find a happy future. “Julia is staying with us. She is a great fan of yours,” said Lucy in her Pont Street manner; a manner which, like Roger’s, but much more subtly, had an element of dumb crambo in it. What she said turned out to be true.

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In the criminal code of Haiti, Basil tells me, there is a provision designed to relieve unemployment, forbidding farmers to raise the dead from their graves and work them in the fields. Some such rule should be observed against the use of live men in books. The algebra of fiction must reduce its problems to symbols if they are to be soluble at all. I am shy of a book commended to me on the grounds that the “characters are alive.” There is no place in literature for a live man, solid and active. At best the author may maintain a kind of Dickensian menagerie, where his characters live behind bars, in darkness, to be liberated twice nightly for a brief gambol under the arc lamps; in they come to the whip crack, dazzled, deafened and doped, tumble through their tricks and scamper out again, to the cages behind which the real business of life, eating and mating, is carried on out of sight of the audience. “Are the lions really alive?” “Yes, lovey.” “Will they eat us up?” “No, lovey, the man won’t let them”—that is all the reviewers mean as a rule when they talk of “life.” The alternative, classical expedient is to take the whole man and reduce him to a manageable abstraction. Set up your picture plain, fix your point of vision, make your figure twenty foot high or the size of a thumbnail, he will be life-size on your canvas; hang your picture in the darkest corner, your heaven will still be its one source of light. Beyond these limits lie only the real trouser buttons and the crepe hair with which the futurists used to adorn their paintings. It is, anyway, in the classical way that I have striven to write; how else can I now write of Lucy? I met her first after I had been some weeks in London; after my return, in fact, from my week at the seaside. I had seen Roger several times; he always said, “You must come and meet Lucy,” but nothing came of these vague proposals until finally, full of curiosity, I went with Basil uninvited. I met him in the London library, late one afternoon. “Are you going to the young Simmondses’?” he said. “Not so far as I know.” “They’ve a party today.” “Roger never said anything to me about it.” “He told me to tell everyone. I’m just on my way there now. Why don’t you come along?” So we took a taxi to Victoria Square, for which I paid. As it turned out, Roger and Lucy were not expecting anyone. He went to work now, in the afternoons, with a committee who were engaged in some fashion in sending supplies to the Red Army in China; he had only just come in and was in his bath. Lucy was listening to the six o’clock news on the wireless. She said, “D’you mind if I keep it on for a minute? There may be something about the dock strike in Madras. Roger will be down in a minute.” She did not say anything about a drink so Basil said, “May I go and look for the whisky?” “Yes, of course. How stupid of me. I always forget. There’s probably some in the dining room.” He went out and I stayed with Lucy in her hired drawing room. She sat quite still listening to the announcer’s voice. She was five months gone with child—“Even Roger has to admit that it’s proletarian action,” she said later—but as yet scarcely showed it in body; but she was pale, paler, I guessed, than normal, and she wore that incurious, self-regarding expression which sometimes goes with a first pregnancy. Above the sound of the wireless I heard Basil outside, calling upstairs, “Roger. Where do you keep the cork-screw?” When they got to the stock prices, Lucy switched off. “Nothing from Madras,” she said. “But perhaps you aren’t interested in politics.” “Not much,” I said. “Very few of Roger’s friends seem to be.” “It’s rather a new thing with him,” I said. “I expect he doesn’t talk about it unless he thinks people are interested.” That was outrageous, first because it amounted to the claim to know Roger better than I did and, secondly, because I was still smarting from the ruthless boredom of my last two or three meetings with him. “You’d be doing us all a great service if you could keep him to that,” I said. It is a most painful experience to find, when one has been rude, that one has caused no surprise. That is how Lucy received my remark. She merely said, “We’ve got to go out almost at once. We’re going to the theatre in Finsbury and it starts at seven.” “Very inconvenient.” “It suits the workers,” she said. “They have to get up earlier than we do, you see.” Then Roger and Basil came in with the drinks. Roger said, “We’re just going out. They’re doing the Tractor Trilogy at Finsbury. Why don’t you come too. We could probably get another seat, couldn’t we, Lucy?” “I doubt it,” said Lucy. “They’re tremendously booked up.” “I don’t think I will,” I said. “Anyway join us afterwards at the Café Royal.” “I might,” I said. “What have you and Lucy been talking about?” “We listened to the news,” said Lucy. “Nothing from Madras.” “They’ve probably got orders to shut down on it. I.D.C. have got the BBC in their pocket.” “I.D.C.?” I asked. “Imperial Defence College. They’re the new hush-hush crypto-fascist department. They’re in up to the neck with I.C.I. and the oil companies.” “I.C.I.?” “Imperial Chemicals.” “Roger,” said Lucy, “we really must go if we’re to get anything to eat.” “All right,” he said. “See you later at the Café.” I waited for Lucy to say something encouraging. She said, “We shall be there by eleven,” and began looking for her bag among the chintz cushions. I said, “I doubt if I can manage it.” “Are we taking the car?” Roger asked. “No, I sent it away. I’ve had him out all day.” “I’ll order some taxis.” “We could drop Basil and John somewhere,” said Lucy. “No,” I said, “get two.” “We’re going by way of Appenrodts,” said Lucy. “No good for me,” I said, although, in fact, they would pass the corner of St. James’s where I was bound. “I’ll come and watch you eat your sandwiches,” said Basil. That was the end of our first meeting. I came away feeling badly about it, particularly the way in which she had used my Christian name and acquiesced in my joining them later. A commonplace girl who wanted to be snubbing, would have been conspicuously aloof and have said “Mr. Plant,” and I should have recovered some of the lost ground. But Lucy was faultless. I have seen so many young wives go wrong on this point. They have either tried to force an intimacy with their husbands’ friends, claiming, as it were, continuity and identity with the powers of the invaded territory or they have cancelled the passports of the old régime and proclaimed that fresh application must be made to the new authorities and applicants be treated strictly on their merits. Lucy seemed serenely unaware of either danger. I had come inopportunely and been rather rude, but I was one of Roger’s friends; they were like his family to her, or hers to him; we had manifest defects which it was none of her business to reform; we had the right to come to her house unexpectedly, to shout upstairs for the corkscrew, to join her table at supper. The question of intrusion did not arise. It was simply that as far as she was concerned we had no separate or individual existence. It was, as I say, a faultless and highly provocative attitude. I found that in the next few days a surprising amount of my time, which, anyway, was lying heavy on me, was occupied in considering how this attitude, with regard to myself, could be altered. My first move was to ask her and Roger to luncheon. I was confident that none of their other friends—none of those, that is to say, from whom I wished to dissociate myself—would have done such a thing. I did it formally, some days ahead, by letter to Lucy. All this, I knew, would come as a surprise to Roger. He telephoned me to ask, “What’s all this Lucy tells me about your asking us to luncheon?”
Par lilyshanxu - 0 commentaire(s)le 09 mai 2011
Mardi 26 avril 2011

Everyone had their jobs to do now

Qwan considered. 'We need to form a circle round it, so somewhere flat. Look, that level spot. There.' Artemis began dragging the bomb towards the indicated spot. It wasn't so far. And then they could all stand round in a ring and watch it explode. Everyone had their jobs to do now. And the chances of their tasks coming to fruition were slightly less than the chances of a dwarf-goblin marriage ever taking place. And a goblin would rather eat his own feet than marry a dwarf. Artemis had to position the bomb. N° 1 and Qwan were in charge of spell-casting, and Holly had the unenviable tasks of keeping them all alive, and persuading Abbot to join their group. And all this while the island was disinte-grating around them. The volcano was literally being torn apart.Huge segments vanished into space like parts of a giant three-dimensional jigsaw. In minutes, there would be nothing left to transport. Qwan took No.l's hand in his own, leading him to the small level spot. 'OK, young fellow. That thing you did up there, with the soldiers — that was good. I was impressed. But this is the big time. I know you're in pain. That's just because you are sensitive to the spell's breakdown. But you have to ignore that. We have an island to move.' No.l felt his tail vibrate nervously. 'An island? An entire island?' Qwan winked. 'And everyone on it. No pressure.' 'What do we do?' 'I only need one thing from you. Call up your magic, every drop. Let it pass through me and I'll do the rest.' That sounded easy enough. But calling up magic when there were arrows flying and chunks of the countryside disappearing was about as easy as going to the toilet on command, with a dozen people watching. Who all hated you. No.l closed his eyes and thought magical thoughts. Magic. Come on, magic. He tried to open the same doors in his mind as he had when he had conjured up the human soldiers. To his surprise, he found the magic came easier now, as if it was ready to come out. The cage had been opened and the beast was free. No.l felt the power surge through his arms, animating him like a puppet. 'Whoa there, big fellow,' said Qwan. 'No need to blow my head off. Put a leash on it until it's time to go.' The old warlock shouted to Artemis, his thin voice almost whipped away by sonic booms. 'How long?' Artemis was dragging the bomb with some difficulty, digging his heels into the crust and heaving. He couldn't help thinking that Butler would have simply slung the bomb and its casing over one shoulder and hefted it on to the plateau. 'Count to three hundred. Maybe two ninety-nine. Providing the deterioration remains constant, which it should.' Qwan had stopped listening after the words three hundred. He gripped No.l's hands tightly. 'Five minutes and we're going home. Time to start the mantra.' Qwan closed his eyes and bobbled his head from side to side, muttering in the ancient demon tongue. No.l could feel the power of the words, shaping the magic into rising circles of blue fire around them. He held on to his new mentor and joined in, repeating the mantra as if his life depended on it. Which, of course, it did. Holly had a new mission now. Somehow she had to draw Abbot into their little group, and persuade him to join the magic circle. It seemed, judging by the way he was waving his fancy sword, highly unlikely that he would do this volun-tarily.

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The demons kept coming, bent low and bobbing. They loosed bolts from their crossbows on the run, none of which were affected by the surge. Of course they wouldn't be. The rays from her Neutrino were calibrated to have a short life: once they made contact with air, they would dissipate after five seconds unless specifically reset to hold together for longer. Thankfully the bolts were falling short, but not as short as they had been a few moments earlier. Time was running out in more ways than one. A group of especially daredevil imps made it past Holly's arc of fire. Their method of travel was foolhardy and suici-dal. Only idiot luck saved them from crushed skulls. Using a hide shield as a sled, three of them skidded down the crater's inner slope, being tossed hither and thither by rocks and changes in gradient. One second they were fifty metres away, and the next Holly could smell the sweat glistening on their brow plates. Holly swung her gun barrel towards them, but it was too late, she could never make it. And even if she did, the others would use the distraction to make ground. The imps were leering at her. Lips pulled back over sharp pointed teeth. One was especially agitated and had some kind of slime flowing from his pores. The imps seemed to hang suspended in the air for the longest time, and then something happened. The air pulsed, and reality momentarily split into coloured pixels like a faulty computer screen. Holly felt sick to her stomach and the imps winked out of existence, taking a two-metre diam-eter tube of the crater with them. Holly fell back from the hole, which collapsed in on itself. No.l fell to his knees and threw up. 'Magic,' he gasped. 'Breaking down. The lure of Earth is stronger than silver now. No one is safe.' Artemis and Qwan were in slightly better shape, but only slightly. 'I am older and have more control over my empathy,' said Qwan. 'That's why I didn't throw up.' And having said that, he threw up. Artemis didn't even give the old warlock time to recover himself. There was no time. Time was surging and unrav-elling at the same time. 'Come on,' he said. 'Forward.' Holly back-pedalled to her feet, pulling No.l to his. Behind them on the slopes, the demons froze at the sight of the disappearing imps, but now were advancing again with renewed determination. No doubt they believed that Holly was responsible for the disappearance of their little brothers. Temporal booms echoed around the island, as chunks of Hybras spun into the time tunnel. Some would material-ize on Earth and some in space. It was doubtful that any demons unlucky enough to be transported would survive. Not without concentrated magic to forge a compass for them. Artemis dragged himself the last few steps to the bomb, dropping to his knees beside it. He wiped ash from the read-out with his sleeve, then spent a while studying it, nodding along with the flickering of its digital timer. The numbers of the timer were behaving seemingly erratically: jumping forward, slowing down and even back-ing up slightly. But Artemis knew that there would be a pattern in here somewhere. Magic was simply another form of energy, and energy conformed to certain rules. It was simply a matter of watching the timer and counting. It took a while longer than they could afford, but eventually Artemis spotted the repeat. He ran the numbers quickly in his head. 'I see it,' he shouted to Qwan, who was on his knees beside him. 'It's mainly forward. An hour per second for a count of forty, followed by a deceleration to thirty minutes per second for a count of eighteen, then a slight jump back-wards in time, one minute per second back for a count of two. Then it repeats.' Qwan smiled weakly. 'What was the first one again?' Artemis stood heaving the bomb from its cradle of ash and fungus. 'Never mind. You need to prepare to transport this place. I'll move this bomb to wherever you need it.' 'Very well, smart Mud Boy. But we still only have four magical beings. We need N'zall.' Holly backed into the group, still firing. 'I'll see what I can do.' Qwan nodded. 'I have faith in you, Captain. Then again I am a trusting person, and look where that got me.' 'Where do you want this?'
Par lilyshanxu - 0 commentaire(s)le 26 avril 2011

Magical monkey

Soon every demon who was able to climb the mountain had done so, and they were all staring at the magical monkey. Even No.l was entranced. 'What is that?' Qwan fluttered his fingers, causing the monkey to somersault. 'It's a simple magical construct. Instead of allowing the sparks to roam on instinct, I marshal them into a recog-nizable form. It takes time and effort, but in time you will have this micro-control too.' 'No,' said No.l. I mean what is that?' Qwan sighed. 'It's a monkey.' As their numbers grew, the demons became more and more agitated. The warriors crashed horns in a show of strength. They bashed each other's chest plates with their forearms and made a big show of sharpening their swords on stones. 'I miss Butler,' said Artemis. 'Me too,' said Holly, scanning the crowd for the greatest threat. It wasn't easy to decide. Every demon in the crowd seemed as though he was on the verge of hurling himself at the new arrivals. Holly had seen three-dimensional models of demons, of course, but she had never seen the real thing. The models were accurate enough, but they couldn't capture the bloodlust in the creatures' eyes, or the eerie whines that curled out of their noses as battle fever possessed them. Abbot barged through to the front of the group and Holly instantly trained her weapon on his chest. 'Qwan!' said Abbot, obviously amazed. 'You're alive? I thought the warlocks were all dead.' 'Except the one that helped you,' said No.l before he could stop himself. Abbot took a step back. 'Well, yes. Except that one.' Qwan closed his fist and the monkey disappeared. 'I know you,' he said slowly, searching for the memories. 'You were at Taillte. You were a dissenter.' Abbot drew himself up. 'That's right. I am Abbot the dissenter. We never should have come here. We should have met the humans head-on. The warlocks betrayed us!' He levelled his sword at Qwan. 'You betrayed us!' The other demons growled and rattled their weapons. Abbot took a moment to study the other members of the group. 'A human! That's a human. You have brought the enemy to our door. How long before the rest of them follow in their metal birds?' 'Metal birds?' said Artemis in Gnommish. 'What metal birds? All we have are crossbows, remember?' There followed a collective ooh, as the demons realized that this human spoke their language, albeit with an accent. Abbot decided to change the subject. This boy was pick-ing holes in his story. 'And you brought an elf too, warlock. Armed with a magical weapon. The elves betrayed us at Taillte!' Qwan was getting bored with all this posturing. 'I know, everybody betrayed you at Taillte. Why don't you give the order you're working up to? You want us dead. Give the order, and see if our brother demons will attack the only being who can save them.' Abbot realized that he was on very dangerous ground. This poisonous little bunch had to be dealt with. Quickly and permanently. 'You want to die so much? So be it, you can die.' He pointed his sword at the small group and was on the verge of roaring 'Kill them!' or perhaps 'Death to the traitors!' when Qwan snapped his fingers. He did this in a very showy way, setting off a magical mini-explosion. 'I remember you now. Your name isn't Abbot. You're N'zall, the idiot who ruined the time spell. But you seem different. Those red markings.' Abbot flinched as if struck. A few of the older demons sniggered. Abbot's demon name wasn't brought up very much. Abbot was a little embarrassed by it, not surpris-ingly since N'zall meant 'little horn' in the old demon cant.

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T love this chair,' he said. 'Actually it's more of a throne than a chair, which brings me to our main business here today.' Abbot reached under a leather flap in the chair and pulled out a roughly fashioned bronze crown. 'I think it's about time the Council declared me king for life,' he said, fixing the crown on his head. This new king-for-life idea would be a tough sell. A demon pride was always ruled over by the fittest, and it was a very temporary position. Abbot had only survived as long as he had by mesmerizing anyone who dared chal-lenge him. Most of the Cquncil had been under Abbot's spell for so long that they accepted the suggestion as if it were a royal decree, but some of the younger ones shuddered with violent spasms as their true beliefs wrestled with this new repugnant idea. Their struggles didn't last long. Abbot's suggestion spread like a virus through their conscious and subcon-scious, subduing revolution wherever it was found. Abbot adjusted his crown slightly. 'Enough debate. All in favour, say graaarghl' 'GRAAARGH!' howled the demons, battering the table with gauntlets and swords. 'All hail King Leon,' prompted Abbot. 'ALL HAIL KING LEON!' mimicked the Council, like trained parrots. The adulation was interrupted by a soldier demon, who burst through the lodge's flap. 'There's a… there was a big…' Abbot whipped off the crown. The general population wasn't ready for that yet. 310 'There's a what?' he demanded. 'A big what?' The soldier paused, catching his breath. He realized suddenly that he'd better communicate the bigness of what had happened on the mountain, or else Abbot was liable to behead him for interrupting the meeting. 'There was a big flash.' A big flash? That didn't sound big enough. 'Let me start again. A huge flash of light came from the volcano. Two of the hunting party were nearby. They say someone came through. A group. Four beings.' Abbot frowned. 'Beings?' 'Two demons, maybe. But the other two. The hunter doesn't know what they are.' This was serious. Abbot knew it. These beings could be humans, or worse still, surviving warlocks. If it was a warlock, he would surely guess Abbot's secret. All it would take was one demon with some real power, and his hold on the pride would be gone. This situation had to be contained. 'Very well. The Council will investigate. Nobody else goes up there.' The soldier's Adam's apple bobbed nervously, as if he was about to bear bad news. 'It's too late, Master Abbot. The entire pride is climbing the volcano.' Abbot was halfway to the door before the soldier finished his sentence. 'Follow me!' he shouted to the other demons. 'And bring your weapons.' 'GRAAARGH!' roared the spellbound Council members. Artemis was surprised at how calm he felt. You would think that a teenage human would be terrified at the sight of a pride of demons climbing towards him, but Artemis was more nervous than terrified, and more curious than nervous. He glanced backwards over his shoulder, into the crater they had just climbed out of. 'The pride comes before a fall,' he said softly, then smiled at his own joke. Holly overheard. 'You certainly pick your moment to develop a sense of humour.' 'Usually I would be planning, but this is out of my hands. Qwan is in charge now.' No.l led them along the rim of the crater towards a low rocky ledge. There was a wooden rod jammed into the ground beside the ledge, and hooked over the rod were dozens of silver bangles. Most tarnished and soot-caked. No.l wiggled a bunch over the top of the rod. 'Dimension jumpers leave these here,' he explained, passing them out. 'Just in case they make it back. No one ever did, until now. Except Leon Abbot of course.' Qwan slipped a bangle on to his wrist. 'Dimension jump-ing is suicide. Without silver, a demon will never be able to stay in one place for more than a few seconds. They will drift between times and dimensions until they are killed by exposure or starvation. Magic is the only reason we're here. I am amazed this Abbot person made it back. What is his demon name?' No.l squinted down the mountain pathway. 'You can ask him your self. That's him, the big one elbow-ing his way to the head of the group.' Holly squinted down at the pride leader. 'The one with the curved horns and big sword?' she asked. 'Is he smiling?' 'No.' 'That's Abbot.' It was a strange reunion. There was no hugging, no cham-pagne and no teary-eyed reminiscing. Instead there were bared teeth, drawn swords and threatening behaviour. The latest batch of imps were especially eager to skewer the newcomers and prove their valour. Artemis was the number one target in the group. Imagine, an actual live human here on Hybras. He didn't look so tough. Artemis and company had stayed put on the ledge, wait-ing for the demons to come to them. They didn't have to wait long. The imps arrived first, breathless from the climb and just dying to kill something. If it hadn't been for Qwan, Artemis would have been ripped to shreds on the spot. In fairness, Holly had something to do with keeping Artemis alive too. She tagged the first half-dozen imps with a charge from her Neutrino strong enough to send them scurrying back to what they thought was a safe distance. After that, Qwan managed to hold their attention by conjuring a multi-coloured dancing monkey in the air.
Par lilyshanxu - 0 commentaire(s)le 26 avril 2011
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