Stop Press (4 page)

Winter, meditating in increasing irritation the riddle of the Spider’s prescience, found himself directed to the middle-sized table along with the Master, Dr Bussenschutt. A moment later they were joined by Benton, the senior tutor from whom Timmy’s exeat would have to be obtained. No arrangement, Winter reflected, could have been more dismal. Benton believed that Bussenschutt drank. Bussenschutt knew this. Bussenschutt affected to believe that Benton had an out-of-the-way vulgar accent, and he was in the habit of consulting undergraduates from remote parts of the country in an effort to identify it. This Benton knew. Bussenschutt had once overheard Benton say that Winter thought that Bussenschutt was the very type of the scholar who has never mastered his Latin grammar; and this had confirmed Bussenschutt in his conviction that Winter was, intellectually at the least, dishonest. Winter and Benton disliked each other, as a matter of mere instinct. And on mere instinct they both disliked Mummery, whose table was now levitating stealthily nearer. Mummery, in a moment of some little unrestraint, had once apostrophized Bussenschutt as a hoary-headed and toothless baboon and Bussenschutt, declaring that nothing could be more unacademic that such language, had preached a powerful sermon against Mummery on the text
The name of the wicked shall rot
. It was the business of all four men to work closely together on the production of a learned journal called
Comity
.

Bussenschutt sat down and eyed his companions with the greatest geniality. Then, preserving the same expression he directed his glance to the decanter. ‘Ah, the Smith Woodhouse late-bottled? A wine invariably brilliant on the table.’ He poured out a glass. ‘And the bouquet immense.’

‘I deprecate’, said Mummery loudly, and appearing to address Dr Groper over the fireplace, ‘aroma in ports.’

Benton shifted his chair so as to have his back squarely to the little table. ‘I wish’, he said, ‘we might see the Fonseca ’96.’ Benton was an anxious and nervous person, looking much before and after; his conversation was frequently despondingly optative. ‘I do wish we might have the ’96.’

Bussenschutt cracked a walnut. ‘The Fonseca? We are to have it up for Founder’s Day at the end of the month. By the way, I have had a letter from Jasper Shoon.’

‘From Shoon, the armaments man?’ said Winter. Winter’s mind sometimes strayed to public issues.

‘From Shoon, the collector?’ said Benton. Benton always maintained the attitude of a pure scholar.

‘Indeed, yes – Jasper Shoon. Winter, have I not heard you maintain that port is
not
a right wine?’

‘The intellectual pleasure of drinking wine’, said Winter with the distaste of one forced to reiterate a stale aphorism, ‘is never fully yielded us by port. Shoon?’

Bussenschutt, without at all discomposing the geniality of his features, placed his lips in a whistling position and slowly mingled port and air. ‘I would not deny’, he said with irritating deliberation, ‘that a great claret is the true close to a meal.’

‘If only’, said Benton, ‘they would learn to decant such clarets only when the dessert is being placed on the table. You were remarking that you had heard from Shoon.’

‘To be sure – Shoon. You support me, my dear Benton, in the impression that the vintage ports are maturing more quickly than of old?’

Benton, distracted between alluring topics, turned his head nervously from side to side somewhat like the donkey between two carrots. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I agree. And I wish we had laid down more 1917. And more 1920. We should feel much stronger.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘I wish I knew Shoon.’

‘Shoon?’ said Bussenschutt dubiously, as if the name had been mentioned for the first time. ‘Oh, yes indeed. He has made a most interesting discovery. Winter, the decanter stands.’

Winter, his own thoughts divided between the Spider and this alien but beguiling topic with which Bussenschutt was toying, pushed along the port. At the little table Mummery was making a long-drawn whiffling noise – his habit when engaged in concentrated eavesdropping.

‘Shoon’, said Bussenschutt, ‘has purchased a most remarkable papyrus.’ He cracked another walnut. ‘A document, my dear Winter, preserved on the ancient writing-material made from the stem of
Cyperus Papyrus
: you understand me?’ It was one of Bussenschutt’s most annoying tricks to affect momentary fits of abstraction during which he would address his colleagues as if they were junior undergraduates. He turned again to Benton. ‘You say we are insufficiently provided with 1917? A pity. It is a year that is already in very good condition.’

‘And 1920,’ said Benton.

From the little table came a sound as of the final moments of an emptying bath. Mummery was expressing impatience and indignation.

‘1920?’ murmured Bussenschutt, looking at Benton with a great appearance of bewilderment. ‘Nay, my dear fellow: 407. I said 407.’ Mummery’s noises ceased abruptly. And in Winter’s mind the Eliots retreated defeated.

‘And with what’, said Bussenschutt, contriving to look round the table as if it were a little gathering in a lecture-room, ‘do we associate the year 407 bc? Let me tell you: it is with the rebuilding of the Erechtheum. And now let me say a word on papyri in general.’

‘Really, Master,’ said Benton, ‘this is an affectation in very poor taste. Both Winter and I are abundantly conversant with papyri in general. I wish–’

‘As you are aware, our extant papyri, with the exception of those discovered at Herculaneum, all come from Egypt. But
this
papyrus comes from Athens. It seems to be nothing less than one of those two on which we know from an inscription that there was entered a fair-copy of the expenses involved in the rebuilding of the Erechtheum. Palaeographically, it is likely to be of quite outstanding importance.’ Bussenschutt stretched out his hand for the decanter once more and abruptly ceased to address an imaginary class. ‘A first-rate find,’ he said. ‘Nothing quite so important since your dammed Codex.’

And pronouncing the last words Dr Bussenschutt thrust his face into Benton’s and deliberately made a noise of the most primitive and blood-curdling hatred. In expressiveness it could not have been bettered by Mummery himself.

Winter sighed – not unhappily. He was fond of extravagance, and here was a second extravagance presenting itself in the day. And he was a good deal more interested in Benton’s Codex than he was in the misfortunes of Timmy Eliot’s father. This manuscript had been a storm centre for years. It was of prodigious learned interest, and its discovery by Benton in the Levant had won him his Fellowship and much attention he had never received before – attention to which he had reacted in the most dubious way. Printing only what might whet the curiosity of his fellow scholars, he firmly locked up the Codex, intimating that it would not be published until it passed to the nation on his death. When charged with the perversity of this course he was in the habit of replying mysteriously that his action was the consequence of an undertaking he had given to the Sublime Porte. As nobody knew just how he had come by the Codex – nor very much about the Sublime Porte – this contention could not be disproved. But it was widely believed that Benton had simply hit upon a trick for retaining more importance in the scheme of things than was his natural due. If this was so he had abundantly succeeded: the list of honorary degrees which he had collected from universities ambitious one day to possess the Codex was formidable indeed: he had a commodious box overflowing with foreign decorations; the authorities at the British Museum had been devoted students of the Benton psychology for years; and within the college itself there had been no end of attempts to collar him. A grudge may be none the less keen for being learned. And here was Bussenschutt indulging himself in a demonstration of stored indignation.

Faced with the social duty of blanketing the explosion, Winter felt that this was an expedient moment to bring forward the matter of the Spider. It would be a diversion, and some account of the plight of the Eliots was necessary to make Timmy’s request for an exeat reasonable. There was moreover a link of association – rather slight though it might appear – which he could exploit: that of a celebrated female traveller and Benton’s Levant. So he plunged. ‘By the way, Benton, talking of the Codex: did you ever happen to meet Mrs Birdwire?’

The result of this question was surprising. Benton fell back in his chair with a little cry, his white shirt front splashed with red. There was a moment’s bewildered silence, broken by a noise of intense appreciation from Mummery and the whisk of a servant stooping to retrieve the shattered wine-glass. Benton had merely been startled and spilt his port, but the effect was much as if he had been shot or stabbed.

Bussenschutt, whose features were once more heavily benign, was politely offering Benton a table-napkin, but his eyes – and they were formidably intelligent – were upon Winter. And Winter realized with some dismay that he was suspected of deliberately contriving sensation. It is the instinct of common-rooms to divine in any problematical situation the milder forms of malice.

Benton dabbed at shirt and chin. ‘A rheumatic twinge,’ he said weakly. ‘I wish the Thames Valley was not so dreadfully damp. Mrs Birdwire, did you say? I believe we have met. Why do you ask?’

‘Because of rather an odd story. Eliot–’

Benton recovered himself sufficiently to scowl. ‘A lazy and graceless youth,’ he said unpromisingly.

‘Eliot’s father writes novels. They all concern a character called the Spider.’

Bussenschutt interrupted. ‘Our Eliot is
that
Eliot! Dear me, I must ask him to luncheon.’

‘Novels?’ Benton looked perplexed. ‘I sometime wish I had time to read prose fiction. But I have not. And when I come to think of it I doubt if I have a taste that way.’ He looked about him more confidently. ‘When I come to weigh the matter I am inclined to say that such reading is mere indulgence.’ Benton’s eye went round the table rather as if searching for a weapon. He took a deep breath. ‘Like drink.’

Bussenschutt’s hand went suavely to the decanter. ‘You read no fiction, Benton? I believe that some of the dialect writers might interest you. For example–’

‘There is’, said Winter, raising his voice to cut short this familiar logomachy, ‘a large number of these Spider novels–’

‘Thirty-seven’, interrupted Mummery suddenly and authoritatively from the little table. He addressed the ceiling and spoke so loudly that even the people at the big table looked round.

‘There are thirty-seven of these novels about the Spider, and he has played various roles in them. He used to be a super-crook and a gun-runner; now he’s a sort of private detective.’

‘A crook? A gun-runner? A detective?’ Benton repeated the words painfully, rather as if they were highly technical terms in one of the remoter branches of knowledge.

‘The masterpiece’, said Bussenschutt judicially, ‘was undoubtedly
The Spider Bites Back
. There has been nothing so good since.’

‘And now’, said Winter, who was beginning to enjoy retailing Timmy’s sensation, ‘the Spider has come alive. And burgled Mrs Birdwire.’

From the little table once more came a whiffling sound. Mummery was finding this more than mildly interesting. So was Bussenschutt. ‘The Spider has come alive?’ he exclaimed. ‘Here is a philosophical quiddity indeed. Benton, my dear fellow, does your ignorance extend to
Frankenstein
?’

Benton, who in point of aggressiveness appeared to have shot his bolt in equating novels and drink, looked quite bewildered. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I wish you would let Winter tell his story, whatever it may be. Frankenstein? I have heard the name. Didn’t he hit on some tombs of the sixth dynasty?’

Bussenschutt shook his head solemnly. ‘Quite a different Frankenstein, Benton; quite different.
This
Frankenstein was a Genevan student of natural philosophy.’

‘He learnt’, said Winter, who was sometimes willing to second Bussenschutt in tormenting Benton, ‘the secret of imparting life to inanimate matter. Collecting bones from the charnel-houses, he constructed the semblance of a human being. He gave it life!’

‘The creature, endowed with supernatural size and strength’ – abruptly Bussenschutt tapped Benton on his port-stained shirt – ‘but revolting in appearance, inspired loathing in whoever saw it.’ Bussenschutt fixed Benton firmly in the eye. ‘Its voice was
horrible
.’

‘Really,’ said Benton, wriggling in his chair. ‘I wish–’

‘Lonely and miserable,’ continued Winter, ‘it was filled with detestation of its creator. It murdered Frankenstein’s brother and his bride.’

‘And finally,’ Bussenschutt concluded, ‘Frankenstein himself. The monster may very well roam the world today. Winter, pray continue your story.’

‘The Spider’, said Winter, ‘burgled Mrs Birdwire. And the Spider’ – he paused dramatically – ‘
knows all
.’

This echo of Timmy proved the climax of the evening. Benton sprang to his feet with a hoarse cry and hurried out of the room.

Bussenchutt reached for a cigarette and indicated that coffee might be set before him. ‘This’, he said comfortably, ‘is the most interesting thing that has happened for a long time. How oddly one thing leads to another!’ He exchanged a glance of wicked intelligence with Dr Groper above him. ‘We speak, my dear Winter, of the association of ideas. But how much more significant are the obscure and obstinate association of fact. Benton’s reaction to this burglary which you have tossed at us would make a subject for the pen of the good Mr Eliot himself. And now tell me – and need I say Mummery? – all about the incarnation of the Spider.’

Winter repeated Timmy’s tale.

In the small hours he repeated it to himself again, with all the distortions, the elaborations, the obscure logical confusions of dream. He was in the common-room more, a common-room of which the floor was fluid and working like a sullen sea. Bussenschutt and Mummery and Benton were there, and a shadowy fourth who must be Timmy Eliot’s father, and it was his task to bring these four together at a table on which perched a yet more shadowy figure who was Jasper Shoon, the great collector and armament king, grasping an Attic papyrus. The table floated now at one point and now at another but – as if it were some abstraction of modern physics – could never be detected accomplishing the intervening journey; nor would the people come together as they should. And above the fireplace presided the portrait of Dr Groper, who was a huge and puffy spider, one leg grotesquely cocked at a top-heavy pile of thirty-seven books. Winter knew that his own efforts somehow constituted an attempt at a thirty-eighth book – a book of which the parts would not unite but kept flying to the four corners of his mind.