From London Far (40 page)

The journey from level to level and end to end of Mr Neff’s hypertrophied Cottage was dreamlike and endless, like a vast trans-Atlantic reflection of the troglodyte fantasies of Miss Dorcas Macleod; it wanted only the baying of Titian and Giotto to be like a fevered magnification of the hurtlings through Bubear’s warehouse; it was altogether more perilous and confounding than Meredith’s remotely kindred ride with the Flying Foxes over the crumbled battlements of Castle Moila… Another turntable received him; he felt a jolt as the mechanism momentarily faltered; there was a small landslide among the objects of art surrounding him, and a marble object came down hard on his head.

After that mere confusion was about him. It was dark and there was a raw, cold air; he heard the plash of water and dimly knew that he was out upon some landing-stage where the immense abode of Mr Neff touched the answering immensities of the Laurentic Basin. There were low voices about him and a sound as of the straining of oars in heavily laden boats. He listened more intently and could hear too, from far out in the darkness, a steady intermittent splash which told of a succession of objects being dropped into the engulfing waters of the lake… Meredith struggled to a sitting posture. It was quite dark except in one direction – and there he blinked at what was at first no more than a dazzle of light. But presently he saw that it was the vast front porch of Dove Cottage and that there stood Mr Neff himself, insanely dancing beneath the portico, his gold and ruby dove hovering above him while the solemn strains of William Blake’s ‘Jerusalem’ floated down through the air.

‘That’s the lot; now get him in quick.’ Meredith felt himself lifted and tumbled to the bottom of some small and rocking craft; he heard the creaking of oars and knew he was under way. The solemn strains of the massed choirs grew fainter. The
splash…splash…splash
of objects falling into water was louder in his ears. Interminably the rowing went on.

‘…
green and pleasant land
.’ The singing faded out. There was a gentle bump. Meredith was seized and heaved, not overboard, but up. Petrol vapour was in his nostrils.

‘OK,’ said a familiar voice. ‘Quit that splashing; we’ve got the old goat fooled. Jean, get out the barley sugar. We’ll be airborne in three minutes and I reckon there’s nothing like glucose.’

The flying-boat was up, and so was the moon. Mr Drummey looked at the water skimming a few feet beneath them. ‘It’s a load,’ he said thoughtfully.

‘Too much?’ Sucking barley sugar, Meredith peered out.

‘Not if we don’t meet headwinds…and once get out of this blamed bay.’ Drummey glanced at his instruments. ‘Joe,’ he called, ‘we’ll have to take the gap behind the house.’

‘Sure.’ Joe’s voice was even more impassive than usual. Meredith and Jean sat still, aware of some early crisis in the final phase of their adventure.

They were higher now; to Meredith it seemed very high. But Drummey sat slightly frowning, and on the controls his hands were as sensitive as a musician’s. He was a plain, snub-nosed man in the early thirties. But after all, thought Meredith, it is not only art that is beautiful – nor, among human kind, only the photogenic faces of Hollywood… He caught his breath. Dove Cottage had appeared again in the moonlight. And it was hurtling at them like a projectile through the air.

‘Right over the top,’ explained Joe. ‘Otherwise you’re wrong for the line of the valley beyond.’ He paused. ‘Yards, this time.’

‘Feet’, said Drummey. Dove Cottage disappeared. ‘Inches…
hold tight!
’

The flying-boat jarred and violently rocked in air. A second later it was flying on its way on an even keel. Joe picked himself up. ‘Hit it,’ he said. ‘Which is clean crazy. We ought to be dead.’

‘Only that fool tank.’ It was the young man called John who spoke. ‘Plastic stuff and we shivered it by catching the last centimetre of the top. Tricky materials always. Jiminy – have a look!’

Meredith and Jean scrambled to a point of vantage. Vast and fantastic in the clear moonlight, Dove Cottage was veering away behind them. But it was no longer a swell home; it had become in an instant an inverted Niagara, a fountain a hundred times more gigantic than any ever conceived by Louis Quatorze or Kubla Khan. ‘The swimming pool!’ said Jean. ‘And the sharks and octopode must be coming down like an unholy hail–’

‘Or like frogs in China,’ said Drummey without stirring. ‘But, of course, there it’s tadpoles chiefly. Always a bit of exaggeration in travellers’ tales.’

‘But I don’t see–’ And Jean stared in perplexity at this sudden Eighth Wonder of the World, now rapidly diminishing behind them.
‘All
that water–’

‘Mains,’ said Drummey. ‘There’s three mains goes up there with booster pumps behind them. Any of them can recharge the tank in five minutes with water at a temperature how you like. And if it’s as you say, I reckon the valves must have gone when we got the tank. What’s falling over the old man’s palace is tens of thousands of gallons of cold water a minute. Dampening… Well, we’re clear. Nothing in front of us but the Mountains of Mayo and the Pennine Chain.’

Jean was still gazing backwards. Dove Cottage had shrunk to the dimensions of a toy, and presently the sides of the valley closed in and blotted it out – a tiny aqueous fantasy. ‘Higgy’s final indignity,’ she murmured. ‘The greatest shower-bath in history. And all because I took him on a petting-party to – what was it called? – Rest-and-be-thankful.’

For the first time Drummey looked up from his instruments. ‘What’s that?’

‘He never got there. He was captured instead.’

‘Sometimes,’ said Joe sagely, ‘it’s pretty well the same thing.’

The Atlantic was beneath them; behind shone great Arcturus; to the south was Antares rising; the clear white light of Lyra hung at the zenith of the pale blue dome above; the nose of the flying-boat pointed into Cygnus, the cross of which was sweeping on its side through the eastern sky. Interminably John murmured of these stars, of Capella and Aldebaran; interminably he mumbled over the sums they set him; interminably the engines droned. But it was all a great improvement on Captain von Schwiebus’ submarine. Meredith, rejoicing in this almost planetary progress, did not inquire whether headwinds were before them.

‘But I’m still not at all sure’, he said, ‘just how it was managed. Coffee – and sandwiches? How very delightful.’

Drummey grinned. ‘I jes’ thought I’d keep in contact. You know, there must have been something about Miss Halliwell put it in my head.’

‘Is that so?’ said Meredith, slightly puzzled.

‘We were to be out there, anyway, you know, tuning up for some fool trip to the Coast in the morning. But it couldn’t have been done if Jea – if Miss Halliwell hadn’t squared Flosdorf pretty quick.’

Jean set down her mug. ‘It was eating candy,’ she explained seriously. ‘Flosdorf realized it just couldn’t be kept quiet and that his best chance was to bolt. I dare say he’s in Cincinnati or St Louis by now. But he realized too that the less of that stolen property was destroyed the less bleak it would be for him if he was finally nobbled. So he came round in under three minutes and fixed as many of the underlings as were necessary. But with all those belts going at the pace they did it was very much what you might call working against time.’

‘And so we have virtually the whole collection on board?’

As Meredith spoke Joe squeezed himself through a hatch. ‘There’s just over five hundred paintings,’ he said, ‘and some of them about as big as a tennis-court. But that’s nothing – nor all the etchings and things either. The real freight’s the marbles and bronzes. Talk of blondes in your bomb-racks! We’ve got bevies of Venuses and the like cuddling themselves all over the ship.’

‘It’s a load,’ said Drummey. ‘But we’ll make it…if this darn wind shifts.’

‘I wonder’ – Meredith was troubled – ‘whether we are justified in taking this particularly venturesome course? After all, we need only–’

‘We’re going right across.’ Drummey was again impassive.
‘Britain delivers the goods
– remember that one? What you used to stamp on the crates when you sent on Lend-Lease pepper-pots and grand pianos to guileless neutrals. But it’s
America delivers the goods
this time. John and Joe and I propose to hand you back your effects. Might make a little round trip of it: London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris.’

‘I’m not sure’, said Jean, ‘that I wouldn’t like to take Castle Moila and Carron Lodge in passing.’

‘Likely enough’, said Drummey, ‘we’ll be going that way.’

It was freezing, but the three young men were sweating as well as heavy eyed. The constellations had gone and with them the moon. Only just above the horizon northwards there was a faint white light, the faintest aurora, as if another moon was rising there. Meredith had learnt the meaning of the altimeter and the artificial horizon. The flying-boat was going down.

‘Ought to have a crew of six,’ growled Joe. ‘The old goat liked things on a tidy scale. But he liked economies too… Going down? Sure we are.’

‘In that case hadn’t we better jettison some of those bronzes and marbles?’

‘America delivers the goods.’ Drummey’s voice was resolute. ‘But we’re not going down willy-nilly – or not yet. It may be less dirty just skimming the big drink.’

‘You really go as low as that?’

‘Just so as to clear the smoke-stack of the
Queen Mary
. Eh, Joe?’

‘Sure.’

‘And the rollers. If the moon comes through you’ll see them any time now. Rather flattened out when viewed from above. But not what you could call harmless-looking, all the same.’

‘Wonderful guys, those on the ferry services,’ said Joe cheerfully. ‘Nerve. And not just nerve. Nerve this week and nerve next. Chronic nerve, like some folks can run to chronic alcoholism or chronic love… What was that?’

‘I thought’, said Jean, ‘that it was a wave. At least it was green, and watery, and it rolled.’

Drummey nodded. ‘Matter of fact, it was two waves – and us between. Ship’s going crank. Nothing for it, I’m afraid, but to let a couple of tons of marble go after all. Jean, do you and Mr Meredith act as selection committee.’ His eyes were fixed on the dials before him. ‘And don’t deliberate too long.’

‘Folks,’ said John suddenly – and Meredith awoke with a start – ‘what’s the height of Ben Nevis?’

‘Four thousand, four hundred, and six,’ said Jean promptly.

Drummey swung round, and for the first time his voice was sharp. ‘John,’ he said, ‘d’you mean that?’

‘Cloud by night and fog at dawn’ – John’s tone was disgusted – ‘so what can I do? Fifty miles one way or another all round the compass. We may be over land by now.’

‘Then get out more of those marbles. Stop short only when you come to Myron and Praxiteles. We need another three thousand feet.’

Meredith considered. ‘There are two more that we might reasonably spare. One appears to be a St Bruno by José de Mora, a very strained piece of Baroque piety–’

‘Turn it out.’

‘The other is probably rather good – an allegorical group I can’t quite make out, by a living Yugoslavian sculptor.’

‘If he’s living he won’t mind help keeping us alive too. And he can chisel another one. Send it down.’ Drummey was silent for some moments. ‘There!’ he said triumphantly. ‘Climbing like a bird.’

‘And, jiminy, there’s the sun!’ John grabbed his instruments. ‘I’ll have us sitting on the Clyde in under a quarter of an hour. Mr Meredith, you can be in London in time for dinner, same as the old goat was going to be.’

‘London?’ Meredith was again almost asleep. ‘Well, it began there…and with scraps of poetry–’

‘Or almost poetry.’ Jean dug for the last piece of barley sugar.

‘Resolved at length, from vice and
London
far,

To breathe in distant fields a purer air–’

Drummey shook his head. It was the first movement undirected to flying his craft that they had seen him make. ‘Purer air? It’s not distance will get you that. It’s altitude… Look at this.’

The flying-boat had risen from fog to cloud and from cloud to clear sky in which the dawn was breaking over endless vistas of blue and grey and gold. Drummey looked all round, loosened and threw off his helmet, set back his head:

‘Before the starry threshold of Jove’s court–’

Meredith came quite wide awake in his surprise. For all three young men were chanting in unison, and they were as beautiful as singing angels by Botticelli – or as any picture that Don Perez had ever stolen.

‘Before the starry threshold of Jove’s court

My mansion is, where those immortal shapes

Of bright aerial spirits live insphered

In regions mild of calm and serene air,

Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot

Which men call earth…’

Drummey had Jean’s hand in his; he was looking now at Meredith and now at his instruments with an eye which had lost its strained look and taken on a glint of mischief. ‘One of the advantages of the American language’, he said, ‘is its reams of poetry.’

‘Dear me! I never heard before that Milton was an American.’

‘He would have made not a bad one. But airmen, you see, must have a great deal of poetry by heart if they’re not going to go to sleep. That’s why between us we beat the
Luftwaffe
. They didn’t have nearly enough poetry to keep awake on. Not even when they stretched a strict Aryan point or two and included Heine… And now for the bonny banks of the Clyde.’ Drummey was silent for several minutes. ‘About Neff,’ he said. ‘Do you know, all that thieving and hoarding is beginning to make me feel mad?’

‘And I, on the contrary, am coming to view it rather dispassionately.’ Meredith looked at the young men, and at Jean, and smiled. ‘All he stole was museums, after all. And although museums are important, they are not what is really important. What is really important is – well, what is going on. It’s only if the museums help there that they begin to pay for what we spend on the lighting and the heating and the attendants.’