Love in a Bottle (18 page)

He arrived at a grim wood, where the strange shape of the trees, the dark green cliffs and fearsome airborne cries signalled the proximity of danger. He steadied the lance in his hand and, following his instinct, rode directly into the place where the air of menace seemed greatest. Only then did he begin to wonder why he had not encountered
a single shepherd or ancient mountaineer warning him to proceed no further.

The way was precipitous, and, tormented by hunger, he was becoming ever more impatient. Finally he came across a great pile of human bones. At the start of the next turning he could see a cave. To the expert eye its shape betrayed, quite unmistakably, that it was tailor-made for a dragon. Bearing his lance stiffly before him (he had earlier taken care to remove the little English flag) he advanced warily.

But who could describe the rage he felt when, on
reaching
the entrance, he spotted a large notice announcing in flowery Gothic lettering that the dragon had since moved house, and now resided in the cave under the peak popularly known as the Dead Mountains’ Carnival Doughnut?

Lancelot knew only too well that the Dead Mountains lay some twenty miles to the north, and that, moreover, with its many precipitous ranges and three infamous passes where thieves waited to plunder travellers, the route, even ignoring the poor transport arrangements of the period, was not generally considered a very agreeable one.

After much humming and hawing, he turned his horse round, went back and stopped for the night at the Famous Griffin. Dinner began with some white breast of chicken, finely sliced, followed by a large carp, a highly spiced and very tasty leg of veal, some rather unusual regional pastries and a basket of superb apples. The wine was no less satisfactory. But the greatest surprise of all was that he wasn’t miserable.

Nor did his misery return the next morning. The sun shone. There was a cheerful clonking of bells under his
window as a line of cattle went past on their way to the meadow, and the whole beautiful world was filled with the comforting smell of manure. The breakfast liqueur (a light vermouth) and the rabbit pâté that followed were both extremely pleasant. Lancelot felt an irresistible urge to bathe in the lake and then fall asleep in the grass.

And then he remembered the dragon, the three mountain passes bristling with robbers, and all the dismal hardships of the life of derring-do. For some hours he waged a difficult struggle with himself.

Finally, towards midday, he pulled on his boots and, thus attired, stamped his foot decisively on the floor.

“No, I won’t!”

And he set off, back towards Carreol, without the Queen’s shoe. And the dragon lived happily ever after, in its cave under the peak of the mountain popularly known as the Carnival Doughnut.

“He’s only human, after all,” Lancelot told himself.

A curious dullness crept through his brain. He was living in a new universe, one in which everything was pleasant and amiable—and that was precisely what was so terrifying and incomprehensible. The landscape of this new world was so impossible to find his way around that it simply annihilated thought. He felt like a man who has drunk a great deal of beer. And not without cause. He had knocked back a pint at every hostelry along the way.

And thus he arrived at Carreol, where Arthur held court in those days. He washed off the dust of the road and prepared to enter the exalted presence of the Queen.
But he had barely stepped out of the door of his lodgings when he bumped into Gawain, who greeted him with the exciting news that it was two-all at half-time in the crucially important jousting tournament between Cornwall and Wales, and promptly dragged him along to watch. After the match there was a banquet in honour of the victors. Lancelot completely forgot himself in the general jollity, which continued until well after midnight, and it was only the next morning that he remembered his audience with the Queen.

By the time he reached the Palace she was already out walking with her ladies in the park. Fortunately he was very familiar with the route she took, and he dashed off to take his place behind the lime tree whence, according to the courtly custom that had grown up over the years, he would step out into her path, as if by chance, as she came strolling by.

But he arrived too late. She was already in the avenue. To hide behind a tree and then instantly reappear from behind it now seemed a rather pointless formality.

He knelt before her and kissed the hem of her garment. An ambiguous smile played on her lips, and she did not immediately pronounce her usual “Pray rise, worthy knight!” until Lancelot had grown tired of kneeling and a degree of irritation had infused itself into him.

“They tell me you came back yesterday,” she suddenly remarked.

“That is so, my lady,” he replied, blushing.

“Indeed? Then rise, worthy knight,” she declared, but with an offhand brusqueness that reduced the time-honoured
phrase to a casual insult. Lancelot was deeply disconcerted. What worried him most was that the Queen’s anger seemed so distant—as if it had not been directed at him at all.

“My lady has grown even more beautiful in my absence, if that were possible,” he ventured, both clumsily and without any of the old sense of his heart in his throat at the sight of Guinevere’s newly enhanced beauty. She was extremely beautiful, to be sure, but some little monster hidden in the trees had whispered in Lancelot’s ear: “So what?”

“From which it is quite clear that you have never loved me,” she continued, somewhat illogically. “I simply do not understand your behaviour. But no matter. The question is—have you brought my shoe? Hand it over!”

“Indeed, my lady,” he stuttered. “That is to say… as regards the shoe… I forgot… I left it in my lodgings.”

“You left it in your lodgings?” (eyebrows raised to an impossible height).

“Strictly speaking, it isn’t actually in my lodgings, it’s…”

“It’s where, precisely?”

“That is to say, on my way back, it was stolen from me…”

“From you, the knight without a stain?”

“Now I remember—it was during a card game. I was forced to offer it as a pledge. To an Ishmaelite.”

“And how many heads did the dragon have?” she
suddenly
asked.

“Just the one,” he replied guiltily.

“And you didn’t cut it off!” she yelled.

“No. What happened was…”

But he was not allowed to explain. The Queen looked him up and down with unspeakable disdain, then turned her head away and made off at great speed, trailing her female entourage behind her.

Lancelot stood there, his head down on his collar. He had lost the Queen’s favour! He had expected the thunderbolt. He had expected the ground to open under his feet. He had been prepared for his soul to sizzle and flash as it was cleft in twain in indescribable agony. But the lightning had not struck. The ground, and his soul, had not been cleft in twain. In the new world in which he found himself, it seemed there were no thunderstorms, only little squirrels in the branches, and babbling brooks among the trees, and a general beer-swilling happiness. It was horrible.

That evening, over dinner at court, the Queen made his loss of favour clear to all by calling for Gawain to pass her the peaches. The next day the whole town was talking about it. Whenever Lancelot entered a room in the palace, the laughter instantly stopped and the ladies of the court gazed at him with tears in their eyes.

Lancelot threw himself into gambling, won steadily, bought himself three new horses and a first-class sword, and went carefully through his bailiff’s accounts. He took out two books he had purchased in his youth, Cato’s
Wise Sayings
and Peter Abelard’s enthralling tome on the Holy Trinity that had caused such stir in its day. He resolved to make himself perfect in the Latin language. Suddenly his life had so much more scope than before. And it pained him grievously. What pained him beyond words was that he was no longer miserable.

The time came when he could deny it no longer, and could even say it out loud:

“I do not love Queen Guinevere.”

The whole miracle was both ugly and incomprehensible. Such things did not happen in the course of nature. You might lose a pair of spurs, or an overcoat. You could even mislay, as he once had, a sword. But not Love! Except of course by magic. And he remembered the night he had spent at Chatelmerveil.

Lancelot was a man of action. He was instantly on his horse and speeding towards Klingsor’s castle.

From his tower the magician saw him coming and hurried out to greet him.

“He’s come to thank me for my kindness,” he whispered, and tears welled up in his eyes.

But Lancelot leapt down from the saddle and most
decisively
seized the magician by the beard.

“You scoundrel!” he bellowed. “Uncle of dogs and lover of bitches! But why do I waste words? Give me back my Love this minute!”

“Oh, oh, oh,” sobbed Klingsor. “So you haven’t been any happier all this time? Don’t you see now how much broader life is, and how full of interesting things, when you’re not bound hand and foot to Love?”

“Stop mouthing, you cousin of toads and hedgehogs, fiend and Devil and all his works!” Lancelot added
vigorously
, and gave Klingsor’s beard a twist. “Give me back my Love, this minute!”

“As you wish,” Klingsor replied, with a disappointed sigh.

He led Lancelot into the castle. From the row of bottles he took down the one with
“Amor, amoris
, masc.” on the label, cut the string and lifted the Love spirit out with his pincers. He wrapped it in a wafer and handed it to Lancelot, who swallowed it with a glass of water.

A few seconds later Lancelot shuddered violently. His entire body and soul were torn with pain. His knees shook, his head buzzed and the world darkened before his eyes.

“I have lost the Queen’s favour!” he gasped. He clutched his throat and dashed out without so much as a word of farewell.

The pain was so intense he had difficulty staying on the horse. His tears flowed, and he lowered the crest of his helmet so that no one would notice his shame. But they flowed so copiously that they leaked out under the visor and ran down his armour.

And he was happy.

1935

P
ETER RARELY
was on his way home by train from Inverness in the Scottish Highlands, where he
supported
a course for students on the bagpipes, at his own expense, since everyone was complaining that with the advance of the gramophone and the radio this illustrious and ancient form of music was dying out. He had just been up for the closing ceremony and was feeling very pleased with the way things had gone. If only my bear sanctuary would do as well, he mused. Another of his great concerns was that these remarkable animals had become extinct in the British Isles, and he had made a home in the Welsh forests for some bears imported from Transylvania.

But his main worry was his number-counters. He had hired some unemployed people to count up to 7,300,000 without stopping. Two had already given up, three were still counting, but when he had left London even the best of them had only managed something like 1,250,000. Where might he have got up to since?

In the express dining car he caught sight of a familiar face. It was the writer Tom Maclean. Maclean was sitting on his own, sipping spoonfuls of mock turtle soup, gazing
thoughtfully into the distance, and jotting down the
occasional
word on his notepad.

“May I?” Rarely asked, settling himself down beside the writer. “I’m not disturbing you?”

“You certainly are, very much so,” Maclean replied with obvious delight. “Please stay and disturb me some more. It would be a real kindness.”

Rarely began to feel somewhat alarmed. The thought had flashed through his mind that he might not be the most eccentric person on the train.

“Because, you see, I’m working,” Maclean continued. “I’m preparing notes for a radio broadcast about my Scottish experiences. At least while I’m talking to you I won’t be working. Sir, the amount I have to do is
intolerable
. I’m fed up with myself, absolutely fed up. I’ve just been to Scotland for a bit of a rest. I tell you—I was there for a month—in that time I translated a novel from the French, wrote two essays and a novella, eight sketches for the
Morning Glory
, six book reviews for the
Spectator
and ten longer articles for a forthcoming lexicon entitled
Women, Children and Dogs in the Service of Humanity
. And I’ve still got two radio talks waiting to be done.”

“That’s very interesting,” said Rarely. “I always thought that writers like you lay around all day waiting for
inspiration
, and then wrote only once it had struck. You seem to have a lot more to do than my own rather simpler sort of millionaire.”

“I’ve no idea how hard a millionaire works, because I heartily dislike those sort of people, present company always
excepted, of course. But the number of things I have to deal with has become more than I can bear. You’ve just heard what my holiday consisted of. You can imagine how much I do when I’m actually working. I have to submit two novels to my publisher every year, three articles for the paper every week… then there are my book reviews and reader’s reports. I have to dash off the odd novella to show that I am still a creative writer, plus the odd bit of scholarship, so that I don’t get dulled by all the other writing; oh, yes, and the publicity notices for my friend’s books, and the little demolition jobs on those by my enemies… What does all that come to?”

“Monstrous. How do you manage it? When do you do all this writing?”

“You should really be asking, when do I not? I fall asleep writing, and wake up writing. I plan my hero’s fate in my dreams, and the moment I open my eyes the signing-off phrase for my radio broadcast comes into my head.”

“And when do you live?”

“Never. I’ve no time for sport, and none for love. For years the only women I’ve spoken to have been the ones bringing manuscripts, and believe me, they aren’t the most congenial. But that’s not the real problem. The problem is finding time to read.”

“But you’ve just been telling me about your book reviews and reader’s reports… You must surely have to read those, at least.”

“Oh yes, sir, I read an appalling amount—six or seven hours a day. But only the sort of things that publishers and editors lumber me with, or books I need for something I’m
writing. Do you know, I would really love to read a book purely for its own sake. Something that’d be of no use to me whatsoever. The stories of Hans Christian Andersen, for example. For years I’ve been dying to read
The Ugly
Duckling
and I’ve never got round to it.”

Rarely pondered this for a moment, then blurted out:

“But why the devil do you work so hard?”

“For a living, my dear sir, to make a living. You of course wouldn’t know this, but ordinary people have to earn their crust. With you, its almost automatic. I’m not a popular writer, my books aren’t suitable for turning into films, I don’t have the sort of brazenness that would enable me to write plays. I’m just a grey literary journeyman, and I have to slave away morning, noon and night simply to make ends meet.”

“If I might ask a rather impertinent question, how much do you earn?”

“Five or six hundred a year.”

“What? For all that work? That is appalling. My heart really goes out to you. And you aren’t even a dying art-form, like the bagpipes.”

“I will be, sooner or later. Nobody wants the sort of thing I do.”

“Listen here, Maclean. I’ve a proposition to make. I’ll pay you a thousand pounds a year. Now, don’t jump up in excitement. Of course I’m not giving it to you for nothing. In return I would ask you, as from today, not to write another word. Not a single one. Do you accept my offer?”

“Do I accept? What a question! Do you think if my guardian angel flew in through the window I’d give her a
good kicking? Sir, you are restoring me to life and humanity. There will be tears in my eyes every time I pronounce your name. Sir… my angel… henceforth I shall spend all my time fishing. And chasing women, women who don’t bring me manuscripts, and who never open a book. Illiterates, in fact. And I shall read
The Ugly
Duckling
and the
Summa
of Thomas Aquinas. And I shall be the first happy writer in the history of literature. Because I won’t be writing.”

A month later Tom Maclean was visiting his sister Jeannie, the wife of Colonel Prescot, who lived in Bournemouth. They were talking over lunch about their far-flung family—Uncle Arthur the country doctor, and his wife who wore such very odd hats; Alastair, the famous seal hunter; John, who had bought a farm in South Africa and sent native penny whistles to the children; Mary, who had just married again; and poor Charles, who would never amount to anything.

“And how are you, Tom? Tell me about yourself,” said Jeannie. Since their mother’s death she had played a
somewhat
maternal role in his life. “Are you working a lot?”

“I’m not doing anything these days. I haven’t written a word for a month. I go fishing, and I read the foreign papers. I’ve learnt Portuguese—a wonderful language. Now I’ve come home for a week’s walking. I’ve bought myself two puppies—Sealyhams—and I’m training them up. And as for women…” And he lapsed into a bashful silence.

“Splendid. And are you happy?”

“Happy? I’m only now starting to feel really myself. I used to be a slave. The last dirty slave. These days I live like the Good Lord himself. In France.”

“I’m so glad, Tom, really glad. Because I’ve been wanting to say to you for some time that you should relax and join in with things a bit more. But what I don’t understand is why you look so unwell. Your face is rather pale and careworn. Why is that?”

“I’ve no idea. Perhaps all the walking—”

“It’s as if you’re not really satisfied, Tom. Look, I know your face. There’s something missing in your life.”

“No, no. You’re quite wrong about that. I’ve never felt so well. I feel like a god!” he shouted angrily.

Jeannie was so astonished she made no reply.

They took coffee in the sitting room. Then Tom went through to the family library to stretch out and do some reading. There he found his fifteen-year-old nephew Fred sitting at the desk, scratching his head.

“Hello, Freddie. Why such a miserable face? Is
something
wrong?”

“Wrong? It’s this pesky homework! I’ve got this essay to write for tomorrow, about Shakespeare and Milton. I’m supposed to ‘compare and contrast’ them. Isn’t that crazy? Why were these two blighters ever born? And it’s Bournemouth v Aston Villa this afternoon.”

“Shakespeare and Milton? Hmm. You know what, my lad? You go off to the match, and I’ll write your essay. It’d be a shame to waste such a fine Sunday afternoon. Shakespeare and Milton. What a joke!”

“Would you really, Uncle Tom? I always said you were a thoroughly decent chap, Dad can say what he likes…”

And out he dashed.

Two hours later Jeannie came into the library. She found Tom working away feverishly, surrounded by densely scribbled sheets of paper, with a Shakespeare on the floor and Milton and the other classics scattered everywhere. The moment she entered Tom glanced up at the ceiling to show his irritation. He clearly didn’t take kindly to being interrupted.

“What are you doing, Tom?”

“Oh, er… I’m helping Freddie with his homework. ‘Compare Shakespeare and Milton’, I ask you! At first glance, you’d never think what a good subject it is. I’ve written fifteen sides and still hardly touched on the matter. I think the teacher will be pleased.”

A few days later Tom Maclean called on Peter Rarely. He found the millionaire in his music room, working on an experiment to get thirty parrots to speak in chorus. He nodded briefly as Tom entered. The parrots, who were in the middle of “God Save the King”, fell silent.

“Sir,” Maclean began, very formally and clearly
embarrassed
. “I am compelled to renege on our agreement. I must ask you not to remit the usual sum next month. I’m terribly sorry. I know it’s not exactly playing the game, but I really have no choice in the matter.”

“What? You want to start writing again?”

“Again? Now I want to start in earnest. So far I’ve just been lazing around. I’ve got the outlines of a five-volume novel sequence, an autobiography of indeterminate length and a life of James IV of Scotland. It’s time I really got going on them.”

“But haven’t you been happy without your writing?”

“No, sir. It’s just no good. If you threw me in prison I’d write in blood on my underwear, like that Mr Kazinczy my Hungarian friend told me about. I wish you good day.”

1937