Stop Press (47 page)

‘Well, yes – I do. Only–’

‘Only you wish this, that, or the other thing.’ Shoon smiled without much friendliness. ‘And I wish that I were a little clearer as to what is going on. I don’t
like
explosions, even when they appear to be wholly the affair of those amiable Eliots. And I don’t like to see you being scared away from the Abbey. I mean, of course, without knowing why.’

‘I assure you’ – Benton was increasingly nervous – ‘my expedition has nothing to do with anything that need cause you uneasiness.’

‘The past which has risen up against you is not, in fact,
our
past?’

‘No. I mean, of course, nothing has risen up against me. The idea is absurd.’

‘Miss Appleby’s brother, the policeman, is not involved?’

Benton stared. ‘I wish I knew what you are talking about. I don’t know anything about a policeman.’

‘Good. Forgive me. I am not so young as I was, and I sometimes imagine plots. Do you ever feel that you are being plotted against? Not a nice feeling. I have always preferred to do the plotting myself… You had better be off on your errand.’

‘My errand?’

‘Benton, why not confide in me? Who is packing you off to town in this peremptory way?’

Benton’s protestations were cut short by a commanding rap on the door; it opened and revealed Bussenschutt. ‘Benton, they say that a car has come for you. I hope you are not deserting our excellent host?’

With an exclamation which might have been the issue either of rage or of mere haste Benton grabbed a hat. ‘I have just been telling Shoon that I have to go to town.’

‘To town! You astonish me. But you are coming back?’

‘I’m coming back.’

Bussenschutt nodded. ‘That’s capital,’ he said. ‘Be sure not to change your mind.’

The visit to the Shoon Collection bore, at the time, the appearance of an interlude – of an episode instructive in itself, but divorced from the obscure drama which was working itself out at the Abbey. It was thus that Appleby regarded the inspection while it was in progress; only later did he see that it had its logical place in the preparation of two distinct catastrophes. Unlike Timmy Eliot, Appleby had never collected butterflies; he regarded all intensive efforts at material accumulation as morbid; his thoughts during part of the time were busy elsewhere.

The Collection was accommodated in the Long Gallery, a pleasing feature of Tudor domestic architecture which Shoon had not failed to incorporate in his highly eclectic mansion. Situated where a more economical age would have crammed a multitude of attics, it ran, broad and low, the whole length of the main building, the severity of its proportions gracefully tempered by spacious bays which ran back over the subsidiary wings. The arch-braced roof, with rudely carved collar beams and purlins, was austerely medieval in suggestion, but beneath – as was fitting in a great library – all was High Renaissance. Dwarf Corinthian pilasters, each shaft a monolith of white marble engaged in walls of pale green marble veneer, supported the Gothic wall posts on their capitals. The six fireplaces – their electric pipes concealed behind wrought-iron screens by Niccoto Grosso – were triumphs of the glyptic extravagance of the later
cinquecento
: luxuriously interwined marble hermaphrodites upheld scrolls and shields, straddling and skipping marble
amorini
played tug-of-war with heavy-fruited garlands or hide-and-seek amid a miniature architecture of wriggly pillars and interrupted arches – all the
amorini
equally and inordinately plump, with the sightless upturned eyes which told of their recent emancipation from dull eccelesiastical functions. The candelabra – so Shoon averred – were by Cellini himself. The silver-ware scattered about was by Francesco di Ser Giorgio da Gravedona. The crucifix over the main fireplace was by Cataluzio da Todi. The bookcases were by Baggins and Wragg, but their fireproof metal was sheathed in mellow Italian walnut with carved and gilded cornices, and the steel lattices which guarded their contents were damasked with dull gold. The carpet was cloth of dusky gold; the occasional furniture was in a lacquer of the palest cream; the books were in a uniform binding of snowy vellum. All in all the Shoon collection was handsomely housed.

The guests went up in batches in a little lift and waited on a rather draughty landing until Shoon came up with the last batch and unlocked the impregnable doors of his library. Mr Eliot’s attitude while attending this ceremony, it occurred to Appleby, was rather that of a devout courtier about to be accorded the
grande entrée
to the presence of some absolute monarch of the past.

‘You know, John,’ he murmured, ‘it is really a very fine thing that a man like Shoon, who has undoubtedly emerged from an environment of international intrigue, and who is rumoured still to dabble in arms in a not altogether honourable and patriotic way – it is really rather fine that he should have such an appreciation of the real achievements of civilization.’

‘I place consistency among the first of the virtues.’

Mr Eliot’s brow clouded. ‘No doubt he is rather enigmatic. And I have sometimes been a little uneasy about Belinda. There are aspects of the household which one cannot altogether like… Dear me!’ The doors had been thrown open and the splendours within revealed. ‘I am afraid it does suggest
money
rather than
books
.’

It suggested a great deal of money. The point was emphasized by Miss Cavey, who was the first to press into Shoon’s arcana of culture. ‘What a magnificent carpet!’ She clapped her hands. The sound rebounded flatly from the marble walls and clattered amid the rafters.

The party entered – treading diffidently upon the magnificent carpet, casting apologetic sidelong glances at the treasures about the walls. Museums are rendered human by being as public as railway stations; over a great private collection there commonly hangs an atmosphere inimical to anything not securely dead. Shoon’s guests, conscious of their own indecent vitality, huddled together in a knot and fell silent.

‘And now’, said Shoon, briskly advancing to the middle of the floor and assuming the tones and bearing of superior guide-lecturer, ‘I will take you straight to what must be of particular interest to us this afternoon.’ He led the way into a bay and opened a bookcase. There could be no moment’s doubt of what it contained. On thirty-seven immaculate vellum spines there gleamed thirty-seven gilt spiders, their legs delicately poised above thirty-seven variously lurid and cryptic titles. Here, illuminated by Cellini, warmed by Niccoto Grosso, reflected in the chased surfaces of Francesco di Ser Giorgio da Gravedona, was a run of those ephemeral if successful romances which Mr Eliot had fabricated for people as unassuming as himself.

‘I had difficulty’, said Shoon, carefully taking a volume from the shelf, ‘in obtaining a first edition of
The Spider’s First Bow
. The dust-wrapper is the great obstacle.’ He opened the book in his hand and showed the front and back-strip of the wrapper orthodoxly bound in at the end. ‘It was a great day when I finally tracked this down.’

The Spider’s First Bow
was handed round in an atmosphere of mild embarrassment. Everyone could see that Mr Eliot was disconcerted at this unexpected introduction to his progeny in an incongruous environment. The incident was one which tact would have passed over rapidly; Rupert Eliot for some reason contrived a heavy pause. ‘I think’, he said – and his faintly insolent voice commanded the attention of the whole company – ‘that Belinda has mentioned that you even sometimes read them?’ He pointed a fastidious finger at his cousin’s books.

‘I
always
read them – and am waiting with the happiest anticipations for the next.’ Shoon, who set such evident store on good manners, glanced at Rupert in surprised reproof. ‘My favourite’ – he seemed to think it necessary to demonstrate that his affirmation was not merely politeness – ‘is
Hire and Salary
: I know nothing better than the manner in which the theme of revenge is there worked in.’ He proceeded to give a fluent résumé of this particular romance.

‘And now’, continued Shoon when he had rounded off this episode according to his own standards of urbanity, ‘it being unfortunately impossible to review the entire Collection this afternoon I propose that we confine ourselves, ladies and gentlemen, to the corner-stones of English Literature.’

There was a little murmur – of agreement, of applause. Mrs Moule produced a notebook; Miss Cavey began to talk in an undertone about the Brontës; Gib Overall, who had been interrogating Wedge on the price of vellum, became guiltily silent.

That is where I myself began: I determined to have the Corner-stones of English Literature! In 1928 I sold eighteen thousand Dreamworld Cinemas Preferred at a hundred and six point nine and set out after Shakespeare. Thanks to the Levitski sale in 1929 and the private dispersal of the Smith Collection that followed the scandal in 1931 I had got him – got the
whole
of him – by 1932.’ Shoon moved across the room and halted before an expanse of marble wall. He touched a concealed spring and the marble slid back to reveal a great steel door. ‘Here is Shakespeare,’ he said.

Faintly from the safe as it swung open issued a breath of decay – of decay and aromatic preservative substances mingled; just so, Appleby remembered, does a well-conducted mortuary smell. They looked at the folios – 1623, 1632, 1663, 1664, 1685: they were all there – and at a run of quartos beside. It could not be denied that Shoon, having set out after Shakespeare with the proceeds of eighteen thousand Dreamworld Cinemas Preferred, had got him. Appleby was handed
Shakespeares Sonnets
:
Never before Imprinted
. In 1609 someone had bought this very copy from John Wright at Christ Church gate, paying fivepence and beginning to read, perhaps, as he took the ferry for
Coriolanus
or
Pericles
at the Globe. And now here was the book sumptuously bound, with Shakespeare’s arms on the front and Shoon’s arms – a hyena rampant – on the back, safe from further chance, change or perusal. Gingerly Appleby opened it: on the title-page a laborious eighteenth-century forger had inscribed ‘Johannes Milton.’ He turned on:

Not marble, nor the guilded monuments,

Of Princes shall out-liue this powrefull rime,

But you shall shine more bright in these contents

That unswept stone, besmeer’d with sluttish time.

When wastefull warre shall Statues ouer-turne,

And broiles roote out the worke of masonry,

Nor Mars his sword, nor warres quick fire shall burne

The Living record of your memory…

Shoon held out a politely impatient hand. Shakespeare went back to the safe. And in a minute the guests were staring – as if at the conclusion of a conjuring trick – at a blank marble wall.

‘Early in 1933’, said Shoon, ‘I received confidential intelligence of the approaching Sedunary crash. Within a couple of months I had quietly disposed of two valuable concessions – they concerned the supplying of African labour to large employers in central Arabia – and at the psychological moment I was on Lord Sedunary’s doorstep.’ Shoon smiled in a scholarly way as he made use of this constellation of popular expressions. ‘By buying his entire Milton, Cowper, Byron, and Shelley libraries I was able to form the nucleus of a particularly rich section: English literature and the Voice of Liberty!’

The guests made pleased noises; Shoon led the way across the room and English Literature and the Voice of Liberty were cursorily inspected. There was some little difficulty over keys, for this very valuable section was secured behind a specially complicated series of grills. Each volume had a bookplate depicting the signing of Magna Carta; one of the less prominent barons in the picture, Mr Eliot was told by his host in a quiet aside, was a Schune.

Then Shoon showed the Coleridge Collection, purchased after his successful flotation of the Medicinal Opium Company (China) Limited, and the Wordsworth Collection, the fruit of the Helvellyn and Skiddaw Garden City Trust. This genetic aspect of his library seemed to fascinate him particularly, and he went on for some time describing its finances and the long series of bankruptcies, alimonies, extinctions, insanities, conflagrations, and irresponsibilities in the great houses of England which had resulted in this important sale and that. His guests, having now for the most part exchanged discomfort for boredom, followed him about in a docile clump. Only here and there stragglers detached themselves to pursue interests of their own.

Appleby, from habit rather than from any feeling of its possible significance, noted the disposition of the party. Rupert Eliot had retired to a deep bay of steel bookcases at the end of the room: he had been given the freedom of Shoon’s collection of
Curiosa
and was improving himself on an unrivalled run of the world’s improper books. Archie Eliot was also improving himself, but on a more material plane. By dint of a manoeuvring for which Appleby felt a good deal of admiration he had contrived to pocket a fine copy of Keats’
Poems
of 1817 and a first edition in original covers of the
Rubá‘iyàt of Omar Khayyám
. For the policeman on holiday this presented a nice ethical social problem: Appleby was meditating it when his attention was attracted to something else. This was the conduct of Gib Overall, who was attempting to master – though with but indifferent success – some obscurely powerful emotional disturbance. Appleby had seen the same symptoms in persons about to indulge in political or ideological demonstration; the chances, he felt, of Mr Eliot’s getting his party away from the Abbey without further embarrasing disturbance were on several accounts slight. Perhaps Mr Eliot felt this himself. As he made the grand tour of the Collection he was looking more and more depressed.

Shoon had now conducted his guests from the books to the manuscripts. For some time they looked at manuscripts which were undoubtedly corner-stones. Then they looked at manuscripts which Shoon described as
parerga
: posthumous fragments, false starts, obscene
jeux d’esprit
, unplaceable clippings and snippings – materials which Wedge, a little soured by the contemplation of so many corner-stones all a dead loss to publishers in their day, disrespectfully described as English Literature and the Wastepaper basket. After this they looked at letters.