Magnus Merriman (12 page)

Magnus found himself buttonholed by the young woman who looked like Joan of Arc. She introduced herself as Beaty Bracken. Magnus had heard a good deal about her, and he was interested to meet her, for she had recently achieved fame by removing a Union Jack from the Castle and placing it in a public urinal. She began to speak familiarly of war and peace, and said that another great war was surely imminent, for on all sides people were talking of it and it was well known that there was no such breeder of war as talk of war.

Magnus said, ‘Then surely it would be wise of you to stop talking about it.'

‘But women must talk about it, because women can do so much to prevent it,' said Miss Bracken earnestly.

‘Is woman's influence always pacific? I seem to remember historical examples of rather warlike women.'

‘Ah, but not women who were mothers!'

‘In the last war there were plenty who boasted of having “given their sons to Britain”. From Sparta onwards history is full of belligerent mothers.'

‘But they went into battle beside their sons.'

‘Who did?' asked Magnus, ‘and when?'

‘There was Dechtire for one.'

‘Who was she?'

‘She was the mother of Cuchullin. She was also an ancestress of mine.'

By this time Magnus had quite forgotten the subject of the argument, and it was clear that Miss Bracken had never known. He told her, in reply to her claim on Cuchullin's blood, that he himself was descended from St Magnus of Orkney, and then he was extricated from the fog of Irish mythology and Norse genealogy by a vivacious lady with heavy ear-rings, an eager vulpine look, and a voice like a macaw's.

‘Mr Merriman!' she cried, ‘I've been dying to meet you! I've read your book. Such a terribly naughty book! Such a terribly naughty man you must be! It frightens me to death to talk to you really, but I feel I must. I told my husband I was going to meet you tonight, and he told me I'd better take care. Ha-ha-ha! What a lot you must know to write a book like that! However did you learn it all? No, don't tell me, don't tell me. I couldn't bear to hear it.
Too
naughty! But I love to read about it. And now you're a Nationalist, too. Isn't that splendid? I think we're all splendid, all we young people who believe in Scotland's future and are prepared to work for it and fight for it if necessary. I should love another war, though I couldn't bear to see people killed, of course. But I think I could do anything for Scotland, I'm
so
enthusiastic about Nationalism, though my husband says it's all rubbish.

At this point Magnus felt a heavy hand on his arm and Mrs Dolphin said to him, ‘There's a gentleman here who's very anxious to meet you, and he's got to go in a few minutes to catch a train. So will you come and talk to him now?'

As soon as they were out of earshot of the vulpine lady she said: ‘I heard that creature shouting away at you and I knew you couldn't stand her blethering much longer, so I
just came to rescue you. But it's true enough there's a man wanting to talk to you, and that's Mr Macdonell, who's a Vice-President of the Party, and a good man too. He's got his head screwed on the right way. He's not like some of these others who talk as if they'd taken a dose of castor-oil and couldn't help it.'

George Macdonell was a short, red, freckled young man on whose very youthful features sat a premature look of statesmanship. He had a serious manner and a deep ringing voice. He said, ‘You made the only sensible speech this evening, Mr Merriman, but you mustn't say things like that again if you're going to be a politician. You must learn tact. You can't afford to alienate people if your primary aim is to obtain their votes. You can frighten them or flatter them, but you shouldn't tell them the simple truth unless you've calculated its effect.'

‘I'll be damned if I turn Socialist or pacifist for any quantity of votes.'

‘If you were contesting an election you would have a large number of Socialists in your electorate, and it would be foolish to offend them.'

‘You're not one of them are you?'

Macdonell laughed shortly. ‘No!' he said.

Magnus began to feel that this young man was a new Machiavelli, and his admiration grew large. He asked several questions, and Macdonell's answers were all very satisfactory. Magnus's spirits rose, and when the guests began to go he shook hands warmly with his new acquaintance and swore they would stir Scotland yet.

He looked for Frieda and found her listening, though without sympathy, to Meiklejohn, who was trying to persuade her of the benefits of Nationalism.

‘Take me out of this crazy joint,' she said, ‘and for God's sake, don't say another word about politics. I'm sick to death of them.'

They said good-bye to their host, but found it difficult to tell him how much they had enjoyed his party because of the vigorous music played by a piper at his very elbow. Magnus asked Meiklejohn to come with them to his flat for a last drink, but Meiklejohn, with the excuse that he
had work to do, refused. Such rejection of conviviality was unusual in him.

Frieda explained: ‘I suppose I wasn't too polite to him about this darned Nationalism. He will talk about it. I've been out with him a couple of times, and he'll talk of nothing else, and the whole sad story just gives me a pain.'

‘That depreciates you, not Nationalism.'

‘Now I ask you, how can a movement be worth anything that depends for its existence on a crowd of nuts and bums and high-brow poets and side-show exhibits like we saw tonight?'

‘Every revolution, from Christianity downwards, has begun by attracting the more volatile elements of society.'

Frieda said with considerable surprise, ‘Now that's the very thing that Meiklejohn said when I asked him the same question. What do you make of that?'

Magnus thought it unnecessary to tell her that he himself had first heard this plausible explanation from Meiklejohn and answered, ‘There's nothing to prevent a problem being correctly solved by more than one person.'

‘Say, are you religious as well as Scotch?'

‘No, just superstitious.'

‘Honest to God? You really are? Do you believe in witches and that sort of thing?'

‘Certainly I do. My great-grandmother, in Orkney, was a rather well-known witch.'

‘No, I'm serious, because I was once scared out of my life, or darned near it, by a witch. That was in York County, Pennsylvania. I'd been hitch-hiking, and I'd got a lift from a drummer who was going to see his girl. Well, it was about ten o'clock of a pitch-black night when we reached the village where she lived, and the wonder is we didn't go right past without seeing it, for there weren't more than five houses on one side of the street and three on the other. It was the darned-loneliest place I ever struck, and the wind was howling like a wolf and lifting the snow off the road—it was in January when this happened—and the whole country seemed empty except for those five houses. And there wasn't so much as a light in any of them. But the drummer was a good guy and he went with me and knocked on the door of
one of them, and presently a woman came down. She didn't seem too pleased to see us. She was Pennsylvania Dutch, and kind of stupid. But after a while she agreed to let me come in and to give me a bed for the night, and then the drummer went off to his girl's home across the street. He didn't want to take me there till he'd had a chance to explain about me, and tell his girl I was only someone he was giving a lift to. So he said good-night and promised he'd come and see me in the morning, and bring his girl with him. But he was back long before that. Well, the old Dutch woman began to make up a bed for me in the parlour, and while she was fixing it she asked me who I was and where I was going, and so on. She asked me who was the guy I was with, and where he was going. So I told her he'd come to see his girl. ‘What girl is that?' she said. She spoke pretty bad English. It sounded as though she was grumbling at something all the time. I said the girl's name was Elsa, and that gave the old woman a surprise. You could see she was upset. She stood still for quite a while, with a blanket in her hands and her mouth half open. Then she said, ‘Elsa, Elsa!' and something in German, I don't know what. So I asked her if anything was wrong with Elsa, and if she had a nice home, and if the family were nice. The old woman got all excited at that, angry, and yet kind of scared as well. Oh, they were a very nice family, she said, but the way she said it you just didn't believe it. “Her father is a carpenter,” she said. “He makes coffins, but he don't make them too good.” Well, just then there was the hell of a knocking at the door, and there was my drummer back again. He was white as cheese, and he was so frightened he couldn't speak. I guess his mouth was too dry. He was shaking all over, and when he tried to say something he just made funny noises. Then he sagged at the knees and slumped down, dead-out in a faint.'

The story was interrupted by their arrival at Magnus's flat, and Frieda postponed its conclusion till Magnus should have found decanter and glasses and they might be comfortably settled. She took off her hat and coat and stood before a mirror, patting her hair.

‘Aren't you going to light the fire?' she asked.

‘I can't find any matches.'

‘Look in my bag: there's some there.'

Magnus opened the bag that she had laid on a table and discovered a magpie's nest of small articles: there were two keys, a powder-box, some loose change, a cigarette case, a lipstick in a metal container, a pocket-comb, several letters and, most remarkable of all, a tooth brush. It was not a new brush that she had just bought, for the bristle tips were faintly tinged with some pink dentifrice. The reason for its presence among articles of strictly daytime use was not immediately apparent, but after no more than a moment's thought Magnus, with characteristic optimism, came to a feasible conclusion.

Frieda, turning away from the mirror, spoke sharply: ‘Here, give me that bag! I'll find the matches.'

‘I've got them,' said Magnus, and put the bag down. Frieda looked at him suspiciously. He wasted no time but clipped her in muscular arms, kissed her enthusiastically, and pulled her on to a sofa. She resisted with a brisk display of energy, wriggled in his grasp, turned her head this way and that, gasped fiercely a command to let go, an adjuration to stop, and then relaxed, and then grew fierce again—but not now to thrust away, for now she drew him to her, holding as strong as he did, nor waited passive to be kissed, but foraged on her behalf.

Presently Magnus said: ‘You're going to be late tonight.'

‘You bet I am,' she answered.

‘What will Uncle Henry say?'

‘Uncle Henry's gone to London, and Aunt Elizabeth's gone with him, and they won't be back for a week.'

Two or three hours later Magnus woke from dreaming of a large Dutchwoman who was spreading bedclothes in an empty coffin. He turned over, remembering Frieda's unfinished story, and immediately the terror of the dream vanished beneath the occursion of pleasure. Like rocks before a flooding tide it disappeared, and over his senses an army of delight marched with music. Frieda, still sleeping, lay beside him. They had left a table-lamp burning, for she had none of that modesty which blemish and physical imperfection so respectably beget. She had undressed with as much pleasure as the owner of one of Rembrandt's great
pictures will draw a curtain and show to a chosen visitor that masterly drawing, that magical light, the gleam as indescribable as that which glorified the visible form of the gods:

And as use makes perfectness, so Frieda had achieved it by implementing her beauty with the grace, dexterity, and cordiality of her love-making. Here, thought Magnus, is the perfect mistress, and suddenly he chanted:

But then he frowned and muttered a rude objurgation, and grew unquiet with vexation to remember he had once quoted that marriage-hymn while Margaret Innes lay beside him: and he had deliberately thrust Margaret out of his memory, for she had disappointed him and made a fool of him by spoiling a fine romantic image with the disclosure of reality. In a variety of ways it was unpleasant to be reminded of Margaret, for he was uncomfortably aware that he had not treated her very well, and to recall the extravagant protestations he had made to her caused him exquisite embarrassment.

Frieda stirred in her sleep, stretched, and woke.

‘Heartsease!' said Magnus. ‘Honeyheart, beatitude! Wake up and tell me the story about the witch.'

‘The hell I will! I want to go to sleep.'

‘Wake up! I want to hear about the witch.'

‘Because you've got a family interest in them? I bet your grandmother didn't behave like this one in Pennsylvania.'

‘It was my great-grandmother. She was my great-grandfather's third wife, and she ill-wished the first two so that they died in childbirth. Then she married him.'