To Love and Be Wise (6 page)

As Toby's hand took him by the back of the collar to drag him away from Searle by force, Serge's arm shot out to where Toby's new-filled beer mug was waiting on the counter. He reached it a split second before Reeve, the landlord, could save it, grabbed it, and launched the whole contents into Searle's face. Searle's head moved sideways by instinct, so that the beer streamed over his neck and shoulder. Screaming with baffled rage, Serge lifted the heavy mug above his head to fling it, but Reeve's large hand closed on his wrist, the mug was prised out of his convulsive clutch, and Reeve said: 'Arthur!'

There was no chucker-out at the Swan, since there had never been any need for one. But when any persuading had to be done, Arthur Tebbetts did it. Arthur was cattleman up at Silverlace Farm, and he was a large, slow, kind creature who would go out of his way to avoid treading on a worm.

'Come now, Mr Ratoff,' Arthur said, enveloping with his Saxon bulk the small struggling cosmopolitan. 'There's no call to get fussed over little things. It's that there gin, Mr Ratoff. I've told you afore. That ain't no drink for a man, Mr Ratoff. Now you come with me, and see if you don't feel the better of a dose of fresh air. See if you don't.'

Serge had no intention of going anywhere with anyone. He wanted to stay and murder this newcomer to Salcott. But there was never any successful argument against Arthur's methods. Arthur just put a friendly arm round one and leaned. The arm was like a limb of a beech tree, and the pressure was that of a landslide. Serge went with him to the door under pressure, and they went out together. Not for one moment had Serge stopped his torrent of accusation and offence, and not once as far as anyone knew had he repeated himself.

As the high babbling voice died into the outer air, the onlookers stirred into relief and conversation again.

'Gentlemen,' said Toby Tullis, 'I apologise on behalf of the Theatre.'

But it was not said lightly enough. Instead of being an actor's gay smoothing over of an awkward moment, it was Toby Tullis reminding them that he spoke for the English Theatre. As Marta had said: everything that Toby did was a little off-key. There was a murmur of amusement, but if anything his speech added to the village's embarrassment.

The landlord mopped Searle's shoulder with a glass-cloth, and begged him to come in behind and his missus would take some clean water to his suit and get the smell of the beer off it before it dried in. But Searle refused. He was quite amiable about it but seemed to want to get out of the place. Walter thought that he was looking a little sick.

They said good-evening to Toby, who was still explaining Serge's temperament in terms of the Theatre, and went out into the sweet evening.

'Does he often sound off like that?' Searle asked.

'Ratoff? He has made scenes before, yes, but never such a violent one. I've never known him use physical means before.'

They met Arthur, returning to his interrupted beer, and Walter asked what had become of the disturber.

'He run away home,' Arthur said with his large smile. 'Went off like an arrow from a bow. He could beat a hare, that one.' And went back to his drink.

'It's early for dinner yet,' Walter said. 'Let us walk home by the river and up by the field-path. I am sorry about the row, but I expect that in your job you are used to temperaments.'

'Well, I have been called things, of course, but so far nothing has actually been flung at me.'

'I dare swear no one ever thought of calling you a middle-west Lucifer before. Poor Serge.' Walter paused to lean on the bridge below the Mill House, and look at the reflection of the afterglow in the waters of the Rushmere. 'Perhaps the old saying is true and it is not possible to love and be wise. When you are as devoted to anyone as Serge is to Toby Tullis, I expect you cease to be sane about the matter.'

'Sane,' said Searle sharply.

'Yes; things lose their proper proportions. Which, I take it, is a loss of sanity.'

Searle was quiet for a long time, staring at the smooth water as it flooded so slowly towards the bridge and then was flicked under it with the sudden hysteria of water sucked round obstacles in its path.

'Sane,' he repeated, watching the place where the water lost control and was sucked under the culvert.

'I'm not suggesting the fellow is mad,' Walter said. 'He has just lost hold of common sense.'

'And is common sense so desirable a quality?'

'An admirable quality.'

'Nothing great ever came out of common sense,' Searle said.

'On the contrary. Lack of common sense is responsible for practically every ill in life. Everything from wars to not moving up in the bus. I see there is a light in the Mill House. Marta must be back.'

They looked up at the pale bulk of the house glowing in the half-dark as a pale flower glows. A single light, still bright yellow in what was left of the daylight, starred the side that looked on the river.

'A light the way Liz likes them,' Searle said.

'Liz?'

'She likes them golden like that in the daylight. Before the dark turns them white.'

For the first time Walter was forced into considering Searle in relation to Liz. It had not crossed his mind until now to consider them in relation to each other at all, since he was not in the least possessive about Liz. This unpossessiveness might have been accounted to him for virtue if it had not sprung directly from the fact that he took her for granted. If by some method of hypnotism the last dregs of Walter's subconscious could have been dragged to the surface, it would have been found that he thought that Liz was doing very well for herself. Even the shadow of such a thought would have shocked Walter's conscious mind, of course; but since he was entirely unself-analytical and largely unselfconscious (a quality that enabled him to perpetrate the broadcasts which so revolted Marta and endeared him to the British public), the farthest his conscious mind went was to hold it gratifying and proper that Liz should love him.

He had known Liz so long that she had no surprises for him. He took it for granted that he knew everything about Liz. But he had not known a simple little fact like her pleasure in lights in the daytime.

And Searle, the newcomer, had learned that.

And, what was more, remembered it.

A faint ripple stirred the flat waters of Walter's self-satisfaction.

'Have you met Marta Hallard?' he asked.

'No.'

'We must remedy that.'

'I have seen her act, of course.'

'Oh. In what?'

'A play called
Walk in Darkness
.'

'Oh, yes. She was good in that. One of her best parts, I think,' Walter said, and dropped the subject. He did not want to talk about
Walk in Darkness
.
Walk in Darkness
might be a Hallard memory, but it was one that held also Marguerite Merriam.

'I suppose we couldn't drop in now?' Searle said, looking up at the light.

'It's a little too near dinner time, I think. Marta isn't the kind of person you drop in on very easily. That, I suspect, is why she chose the isolated Mill House.'

'Perhaps Liz could take me down and present me tomorrow.'

Walter had nearly said: 'Why Liz?' when he remembered that tomorrow was Friday, and that he would be away all day in town. Friday was broadcast day. Searle had remembered that he would not be here tomorrow although he himself had forgotten. Another ripple stirred.

'Yes. Or we might ask her up to dinner. She likes good food. Well, I suppose we had better be getting along.'

But Searle did not move. He was looking up the avenue of willows that bordered the flat pewter surface of the darkening water.

'I've got it!' he said.

'Got what?'

'The theme. The connecting link. The motif.'

'For the book, you mean?'

'Yes. The river. The Rushmere. Why didn't we think of that before?'

'The river! Yes! Why didn't we? I suppose because it isn't entirely an Orfordshire river. But of course it is the perfect solution. It has been done repeatedly for the Thames, and for the Severn. I don't see why it shouldn't work with the smaller Rushmere.'

'Would it give us the variety we need for the book?'

'Indubitably,' said Walter. 'It couldn't be better. It rises in that hilly country, all sheep and stone walls and sharp outlines; then there's the pastoral bit with beautiful farm houses, and great barns, and English trees at their best, and village churches like cathedrals; and then Wickham, the essence of English market towns, where the villein that marched from the town cross to speak to King Richard in London is the same man that prods today's heifer on to the train on its way to the Argentine.' Walter's hand stole up to the breast pocket where he kept his notebook, but fell away again. 'Then the marshes. You know: skeins of geese against an evening sky. Great cloudscapes and shivering grasses. Then the port: Mere Harbour. Almost Dutch. A complete contrast to the county at its back. A town full of lovely individual building, and a harbour full of fishing and coastwise traffic. Gulls, and reflections, and gables. Searle, it's perfect!'

'When do we start?'

'Well, first, how do we do it?'

'Will this thing take a boat?'

'Only a punt. Or a skiff where it widens below the bridge.'

'A punt,' Searle said doubtfully. 'That's one of those flat duck-shooting things.'

'Approximately.'

'That doesn't sound very handy. It had better be canoes.'

'Canoes!'

'Yes. Can you manage one?'

'I've paddled one round an ornamental pond when I was a child. That's all.'

'Oh, well, at least you've got the hang of it. You'll soon remember the drill. How far up could we start, with canoes? Man, it's a wonderful idea. It even gives us our title. "
Canoes on the Rushmere.
" A title with a nice swing to it. Like "
Drums Along the Mohawk.
" Or "
Oil for the Lamps of China
".'

'We shall have to tramp the first bit of it. The sheep-country bit. Down to about Otley. I expect the stream will take a canoe at Otley. Though, God help me, I don't anticipate being much at home in a canoe. We can carry a small pack from the source of the river—it's a spring in the middle of a field, I've always understood—down to Otley or Capel, and from there to the sea we canoe. "
Canoes on the Rushmere
". Yes, it sounds all right. When I go up to town tomorrow I'll go and see Cormac Ross and put the proposition to him and see what he is moved to offer. If he doesn't like it, I have half a dozen more who will jump at it. But Ross is in Lavinia's pocket, so we might as well make use of him if he will play.'

'Of course he will,' Searle said. 'You're practically royalty in this country, aren't you!'

If there was any feeling in the gibe it was not apparent.

'I should really offer it to Debham's,' Walter said. 'They did my book about farm life. But I quarrelled with them about the illustrations. They were dreadful, and the book didn't sell.'

'That was before you took to the air, I infer.'

'Oh, yes.' Walter pushed himself off the bridge and began to walk towards the field-path and dinner. 'They did refuse my poems, after the farm book, so I can use that as a get-out.'

'You write poems too?'

'Who doesn't?'

'I for one.'

'Clod!' said Walter amiably.

And they went back to discussing the ways and means of their progress down the Rushmere.

'COME up to town with me and see Ross,' Walter said at breakfast next morning.

But Searle wanted to stay in the country. It was blasphemy, he said, to spend even one day in London with the English countryside bursting into its first green. Besides, he did not know Ross. It would be better if Walter put the proposition to Ross first, and brought him into the business later.

And Walter, though disappointed, did not stop to analyse the exact quality of his disappointment.

But as he drove up to town his mind was much less occupied than usual with the matter of his broadcast, and a great deal oftener than usual it strayed back to Trimmings.

He went to see Ross and laid before him the plans for
Canoes on the Rushmere
. Ross professed himself delighted and allowed himself to be beaten up an extra 2½ per cent on a provisional agreement. But of course nothing could be settled, he pointed out, until he had consulted Cromarty.

It was popularly supposed that Ross had taken Cromarty into partnership for the fun of it; as a matter of euphony. He had been doing quite well for himself as Cormac Ross, as far as anyone could judge, and there seemed on the surface no reason to rope in a partner; more especially a partner as colourless as Cromarty. But Cormac Ross had sufficient West Highland blood in him to find it difficult to say no. He liked to be liked. So he engaged Cromarty as his smoke-screen. When an author could be received with open arms, the open arms were Cormac Ross's. When an author had regretfully to be turned down it was on account of Cromarty's intransigeance. Cromarty had once said to Ross in a fit of temper: 'You might at least let me
see
the books I turn down!' But that was an extreme case. Normally Cromarty did read the books that he was going to be responsible for rejecting.

Now, faced with the offer of a book by the British Public's current darling, Ross used the automatic phrase about consulting his partner; but his round pink face shone with satisfaction, and he bore Walter off to lunch and bought him a bottle of Romanée-Conti; which was wasted on Walter, who liked beer.

So, full of good burgundy and the prospect of cheques to come, Walter went on to the studio and his mind once more began to play tricks on him and run away back to Salcott instead of staying delightedly in the studio as was its habit.

For half of his weekly time on the air Walter always had a guest. Someone connected with the Open Air; a commodity in which Walter had lately taken so much stock as to make it a virtual Whitmore monopoly. Walter compèred the Open Air in the shape of a poacher, a sheep farmer from the back blocks of Australia, a bird watcher, a keeper from Sutherland, an earnest female who went round pushing acorns into roadside banks, a young dilettante who hunted with a hawk, and anyone else who happened to be both handy and willing. For the latter half of his time Walter merely talked.