Stop Press (5 page)

And then Dr Groper, impatient of order and coherence unachieved, kicked; the books, growing in size with the speed of advancing projectiles, came running down; nothing remained but Winter himself floating on a cold, calm sea. His mind, cold, calm, and as if disengaging itself from the merely fantastic, concentrated on the one purely intellectual problem that had held it in its waking state.

How could a jester, amusing himself at the expense of Mr Eliot, know of literary projects which had perished while still imprisoned in their author’s mind?

The answer formed itself, but before it could be grasped was lost in murmurings. Everywhere people murmuring, Timmy chattering, dons talking as those talk whose main business it is to talk; for a moment the common-room was about him again, full of voices, marathons of conversation – and Dr Groper, restored to Raeburn’s image, looked approvingly down. He tried to continue thinking and his mind was once more a dream-mind only; it was a Master Mind, of Master Mind of books; he was himself the Spider. He was himself both the Spider and the creatures for whom the Spider wove his webs – as men in the medieval sermons are both feasters and feasted upon at the last great Banquet of all.

And then came Mrs Birdwire. She came down from a corner of the dream, herself a huge web, tropical, of the kind against which men throw themselves in vain. This at least he must avoid: this encounter would be fatal. He ran and Mrs Birdwire, cutting her way through a jungle of telephones and typewriters, followed. He ran till he awoke.

Oxford – adorable dreamer, cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmed, lark-charmed, rook-racked, river-rounded – Oxford shivered, lurched, disintegrated into the fluidity of parallax. A few seconds of mere confusion and rhythm asserted itself: at various speeds the grey pinnacles revolved about their axis in the gasworks. It is with this gesture, stately as a figure in the saraband, that Oxford welcomes you; it is with this gesture that Oxford bids you farewell. Thus does the goddess, loosening her zone to the tempo of the Great Western Railway Company’s locomotive, reveal herself to the novice in all her naked loveliness; thus does she gather her garments about her at the unparadising hour. A base and brickish skirt there; graceless growth; and the train whirls you towards the biscuit factories of Reading or crawls with you, maybe, westward into the very womb of England.

Timothy Eliot, curled comfortably in a corner of the compartment with his exeat in his pocket, seemed aware of the symbolism of the accelerating train. ‘In a year’, he said solemnly, ‘they’ll be turning me out.’ And with the stem of a beautiful straight-grain pipe he gestured comprehensively at the retreating towers.

Winter, whose breakfast had been more hurried than he would have wished, peered over
The Times
. ‘One of the best types’, he said, ‘that Oxford turns out. But definitely – praise God – turns out. And you wouldn’t want to be a don, would you?’

Timmy stuffed the pipe – with one of those nameless but expensive mixtures, Winter noticed, which Oxford tobacconists delight to compound for the young on the bespoke principle. He eyed his tutor doubtfully. ‘I’m not sure. It seems a pleasant friendly sort of life in its dim way.’

‘No doubt.’ Winter thought of Bussenschutt, Mummery, and Benton.

‘And I’m able enough.’

‘No doubt.’

‘Well, I am, aren’t I?’

‘You are abundantly lazy. And it’s not so much a matter of ability as of temperament. And now give me ten minutes with this newspaper and we’ll talk of something interesting.’

‘Oh, the Spider.’ Having secured Winter’s company Timmy seemed in no hurry to enlighten him further on the curious situation at home. He fumbled in his pockets. ‘I say, have you got a match? I meant to steal some from the JCR.’

Disapprovingly Winter produced matches. ‘You must be a tolerably wealthy young man. I don’t see that you need to sponge on the people who pay for common-room matches.’

Timmy smiled sleepily; he had eaten a kipper, bacon and two eggs, his own rack of toast and his host’s, together with about a third of a pot of Frank Cooper’s marmalade. ‘Oh well,’ he said, ‘I suppose I pay for them myself in a roundabout way.’

‘You pay at the outside for every third match. The others are paid for by William of Chalfont, Richard à Lys, Sir Humphrey Bohun, and other benefactors of the college these many centuries deceased. Oxford takes your penny to give you at least threepence in return.’

‘
Tant mieux
,’ said Timmy impudently. He was a youth who exquisitely knew how to trade on the
élan
of nonage. ‘I think’, he added maliciously, ‘you’ll find the obituaries on page six.’ And he subsided for a time into a copy of
New Verse
.

Winter, who had in fact the habit of beginning with the obituaries turned not without ostentation to the law reports. And presently Timmy, having read a few poems with great concentration and a few reviews with sympathetic and ribald amusement, began again. He put down the magazine and said firmly: ‘
Que faire?
’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘
Que faire?
Means “What’s to be done?”.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I mean, here you are giving me a liberal education – and what do I know? What the hell
do
I know? If I want to get a job, you know: that sort of thing.’

Resignedly Winter stood up and stowed
The Times
in his suitcase.

‘Is this’, he asked, ‘relevant to our present expedition?’

‘I don’t know that it is. But I’m moderately serious. About what you’re cashing me in on and what I’m fit for – all that.’

‘I’ve just explained on what, in your abominable jargon, you cash in. William of Chalfont and Richard à Lys. Who so arranged things that for a quite inconsiderable outlay you are enjoying comfortable quarters, tolerably polite society, the run of two or three million books, and a highly evolved system of individual education the stamp of which – heaven help me – you will carry to the grave. And now perhaps you will tell me a little more about the Spider.’

Timmy shook his head obstinately. ‘Presently. Go on about what I’m collecting. It’s comforting.’

‘Very well. To that grave’ – and Winter pointed dramatically to the floor of the compartment – ‘you will also carry a nervous tone which is the product of careful physical nurture: of knowledge of the use and abuse of wine, of cookery to subsidize which miners toil in Wales and Kalgoorlie, of the frequentation on the Isis of costly racing craft to perfect which craftsmen have laboured for generations. In a word, skilfully tempered in body, you are privileged to survey the world from the very citadel–’

Timmy sighed. ‘You do talk well. You even know where to take breath in these sentences.’

You are a very impertinent young man. And your impertinence is only redeemed by a breeding which has again cost a great deal of money. As to what you
know
: thanks to me you know some Greek and Latin; and thanks to the prosperous Eliot’s having the freedom of Europe you know a great deal of French and German and a very respectable amount of Italian. As to what you could
do
: I daresay a travel agency might give you a job as an interpreter at a big railway station.’

Timmy touched his hat and twirled imaginary moustaches. ‘Not a bad notion. As a matter of fact I’m thinking of something not dissimilar. The diplomatic. You know Hugo is going in.’ And Timmy smiled happily. He was always in love. At the moment, Winter understood, it was a desolatingly orthodox man at New College.

‘Your Hugo Toplady? I expect he was at Eton? Don’t you think you should have gone there as your father wanted if you were after diplomatic laurels?’

‘I believe they put up with a moderated eccentricity nowadays. As I say – it’s just a notion. And anyway, I don’t think I want to do anything learned. Daddy’s by way of being learned when the Spider stuff lets him. And so is Belinda.’

‘Belinda?’

‘My big sister. Daddy’s keen on Pope. Called his daughter after a girl who was raped in one of his poems.’

Winter made an articulate noise reminiscent of his colleague Mummery. ‘Tell that’, he said, ‘to the Foreign Office. Just the thing to ingratiate you with a board of retired ambassadors. But at least we’re getting somewhere at last. You have a sister Belinda. Continue to tell me about the Eliots.’ He paused. ‘That is if you really want to. For I begin to suspect that you have persuaded me to this jaunt merely because you knew I could get you your confounded exeat.’

Timmy made a childish gesture of cutting his throat. ‘Not so. By the way: was if difficult?’

‘Very. I had to interview Benton in his bedroom at midnight – and after having put my foot in it most resoundingly in the common-room. I had to employ tact; bribery indeed. I had to let him in on a very nice epigraphical problem I had been keeping to myself.’

‘Poor Mr Benton; he loves me not. That Oxford nervous tone, by the way – Benton’s not a very good advertisement for it?’

Winter eyed his pupil thoughtfully. ‘Benton is an importation. And as nervous as could be. Why do you ask?’

Timmy shook his head vaguely. ‘Just that he loves me not – which shows that he must have a troubled soul. And thank you for giving away your problem. And I do most sincerely want your help.’ For a moment Timmy’s eyes expressed the quintessence of sincerity. Then he added: ‘And we’ll have a good weekend anyway. Hugo’s coming down too.’

‘The devil he is!’

‘As a matter of fact, he’s on the train now. But of course travelling soft.’

‘Of course.’

Timmy stretched himself and assumed an expression of deliberate, blood-chilling idiocy. ‘It’s wonderful, isn’t it,’ he said, ‘to know a chap like that?’

Winter looked about the compartment. ‘Timmy – at your boy-and-girl school – did they ever cane anybody?’

‘Absolutely not. I am virgin of the rod.’

‘I see no reason why it should be too late to begin.’

‘And now’, said Timmy briskly, ‘once more about the Spider.’

The Spider – the incarnate and disturbing Spider – had made his existence known over the telephone. Of this first incident Timmy, once launched on his subject, gave a fluent and circumstantial account. He was playing piquet one evening with his father in the library when the bell rang. Mr Eliot picked up the instrument – it was within reach as he sat – and was about to speak; then he checked himself and listened for some seconds in evident annoyance. He made a motion as if to return the receiver to its place, changed his mind, listened for a few seconds more, and finally rammed the receiver down with an exclamation of anger. He turned to Timmy, remarked that it was a pity secretaries had to have holidays like human beings, and went on with his game.

Normally all calls went to Mr Eliot’s secretary and it was only because the secretary was away on holiday that the instrument in the library was directly in contact with the outer world. Timmy conjectured from his father’s rather acid joke that the message had been of the pestering sort that celebrities must endure and he therefore expressed no curiosity. This forbearance was rewarded. Later in the evening Mr Eliot explained. When he picked up the receiver a voice had immediately said: ‘I am the Spider. I know all.’ This was the point at which Mr Eliot had thought of cutting off the caller and refrained. The voice had then said: ‘I have a warning for your paramour Mrs Birdwire.’ And this was when Mr Eliot had angrily put the receiver down. Three nights later the burglary at Mrs Birdwire’s took place.

And after this the Spider got into his stride. One afternoon the vicar called in barely concealed panic. The Spider, it seemed, had again intimated that he knew all. Mr Eliot had the delicate task of reassuring his visitor while steering clear of embarrassing confidence; he conjectured, he told Timmy, that the secret which lay heavy on the vicar’s conscience was Intellectual Doubt. Then there was the village schoolmistress. The Spider – presumably the Spider
qua
detective – let her know that Mr Eliot, and Mr Eliot alone, could reveal to her the mystery of her true paternity. The subject was one on which the schoolmistress had never before entertained doubt; nevertheless the Spider had chosen the recipient of his message with rudimentary psychological skill and Mr Eliot was put to a good deal of trouble before the matter was smoothed over. And hard upon this the Spider contrived several similar absurdities. This represented the first phase of his activities.

The second phase was more subtle. And logically it should have come first. For whereas in the earlier phase the Spider was already an independent agent, devising actions according to his own fancy, in this later phase he contrived to give the impression of painfully breaking free from that ink and paper prison in which he had hitherto had his being. The effect, Timmy put it with a flight of fancy, was as if the inanimate-seeming husk of his father’s books had trembled and cracked – and from the chrysalis there had struggled a living thing. Or it was like an advertisement which he remembered as particularly impressing his youth: that pioneer piece of surrealism in which the ancestors are stepping down from the walls to enjoy a well-known brand of whisky.

It was some time before Mr Eliot appeared to realize what was happening. His habits of composition were a little unusual; commonly he liked to work on two novels simultaneously and in addition to these there would be a number of short stories to which he gave sporadic attention. For years his work had been troublesome to him and when he spoke of it his tone was not infrequently one of irritation. This tendency, as might be imagined, was accentuated at the time of the incidents centring in the Birdwire burglary. And then came a change. Mr Eliot several times spoke with satisfaction of the current novels; he thought there was unusual life in them. The characters were coming alive and going their own way. This is always something grateful to the novelist, even if the result is sleepless nights trying to rebuild a shattered plot. And Mr Eliot, who had peopled thirty-seven volumes with automata, was apparently pleasantly excited at the new sense of his creations stirring beneath his hand. But this feeling lasted only a short time. Mr Eliot was observed to be in increasing perplexity; one morning he held a consultation with his secretary; and the true explanation of his sense of an independent life in his characters emerged. Mr Eliot’s manuscripts were mysteriously rewriting themselves in their files.