A Dance to the Music of Time: 1st Movement

Naturally, Quiggin was delighted when, after a trial of several minutes, no results whatever were achieved. Then the rest of us, in various combinations of persons, attempted to work the board. All these efforts were unsuccessful. Sometimes the pencil shot violently across the surface of the paper, covering sheet after sheet, as a new surface was substituted, with dashes and scribbles. More often, it would not move at all.

  ‘You none of you seem to be getting very far,’ said Templer.

  ‘It may be waste of time,’ said Mrs. Erdleigh. ‘Planchette can be very capricious. Perhaps there is an unsympathetic presence in the room.’

  ‘I should not be at all surprised,’ said Quiggin, speaking with elaborately satirical emphasis.

  He stood with his heels on the fender, his hands in his pockets—rather in the position Le Bas used to adopt when giving a lecture on wiping your boots before coming into the house—very well pleased with the course things were taking.

  ‘I think you are horrid,’ said Mona.

  She made a face at him; in itself a sign of a certain renewed interest.

  ‘I don’t think you ought to believe in such things,’ said Quiggin, nasally.

  ‘But I do.’

  She smiled encouragingly. She had probably begun to feel that occult phenomena, at least by its absence, was proving itself a bore; and that perhaps she might find more fun in returning to her original project of exploring Quiggin’s own possibilities. However, this exchange between them was immediately followed by sudden development among the group resting their fingers on the board. Jean and Mona had been trying their luck with Stripling as third partner. Jean now rose from the table, and, dropping one of those glances at once affectionate and enquiring that raised such a storm within me, she said: ‘You have a go.’

  I took the chair and placed my fingers lightly where hers had been. Previously, when I had formed a trio with Mrs. Erdleigh and Mona—who had insisted on being party to every session—nothing of note had happened. Now, almost at once, Planchette began to move in a slow, regular motion.

  At first, from the ‘feel’ of the movement, I thought Stripling must be manipulating the board deliberately. A glassy look had come into his eye and his loose, rather brutal mouth sagged open. Then the regular, up-and-down rhythm came abruptly to an end. The pencil, as if impatient of all of us, shot off the paper on to the polished wood of the table. A sentence had been written. It was inverted from where Stripling was sitting. In fact the only person who could reasonably be accused of having written the words was myself. The script was long and sloping, Victorian in character. Mrs. Erdleigh took a step forward and read it aloud:

  ‘Karl is not pleased.’

  There was great excitement at this. Everyone crowded round our chairs.

  ‘You must ask who “Karl” is,’ said Mrs. Erdleigh, smiling.

  She was the only one who remained quite unmoved by this sudden manifestation. Such things no longer surprised her. Quiggin, on the other hand, moved quickly round to my side of the table. He seemed divided between a wish to accuse me of having written these words as a hoax, and at the same time an unwillingness to make the admission, obviously necessary in the circumstances, that any such deception must have required quite exceptional manipulative agility. In the end he said nothing, but stood there frowning hard at me.

  ‘Is it Karl speaking?’ asked Stripling, in a respectful, indeed reverential voice.

  We replaced our hands on the board.

  ‘Who else,’ wrote Planchette.

  ‘Shall we continue?’

  ‘Antwortet er immer.’

  ‘Is that German?’ said Stripling.

  ‘What does it mean, Pete?’ Mona called out shrilly.

  Templer looked a little surprised at this.

  ‘Isn’t it: “He always answers”?’ he said. ‘My German is strictly commercial—not intended for communication with the Next World.’

  ‘Have you a message? Please write in English if you do not mind.’

  Stripling’s voice again trembled a little when he said this.

  ‘Nothing to the Left.’

  This was decidedly enigmatic.

  ‘Does he mean we should move the coffee tray?’ Mona almost shouted, now thoroughly excited. ‘He doesn’t say whose left. Perhaps we should clear the whole table.’

  Quiggin took a step nearer.

  ‘Which of you is faking this?’ he said roughly. ‘I believe it is you, Nick.’

  He was grinning hard, but I could see that he was extremely irritated. I pointed out that I could not claim to write neat Victorian calligraphy sideways, and also upside-down, at considerable speed: especially when unable to see the paper written upon.

  ‘You must know “Nothing to the Left” is a quotation,’ Quiggin insisted.

  ‘Who said it?’

  ‘You got a degree in history, didn’t you?’

  ‘I must have missed out that bit.’

  ‘Robespierre, of course,’ said Quiggin, with great contempt. ‘He was speaking politically. Does no one in this country take politics seriously?’

  I could not understand why he had become quite so angry.

  ‘Let’s get on with it,’ said Templer, now at last beginning to show some interest. ‘Perhaps he’ll make himself clearer if pressed.’

  ‘This is too exciting,’ said Mona.

  She clasped her hands together. We tried again.

  ‘Wives in common.’

  This was an uncomfortable remark. It was impossible to guess what the instrument might write next. However, everyone was far too engrossed to notice whether the comment had brought embarrassment to any individual present.

  ‘Look here—’ began Quiggin.

  Before he could complete the sentence, the board began once more to race beneath our fingers.

  ‘Force is the midwife.’

  ‘I hope he isn’t going to get too obstetric,’ said Templer.

  Quiggin turned once more towards me. He was definitely in a rage.

  ‘You must know where these phrases come from,’ he said. ‘You can’t be as ignorant as that.’

  ‘Search me.’

  ‘You are trying to be funny.’

  ‘Never less.’

  ‘Marx, of course, Marx,’ said Quiggin testily, but perhaps wavering in his belief that I was responsible for faking the writing. ‘Das Kapital. . . . The Communist Manifesto.’

  ‘So it’s Karl Marx, is it?’ asked Mona.

  The name was evidently vaguely familiar to her, no doubt from her earlier days when she had known Gypsy Jones; had perhaps even taken part in such activities as selling War Never Pays!

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Quiggin, by implication including Mona in this reproof, probably more violently than he intended. ‘It was quite obvious that one of you was rigging the thing. I admit I can’t at present tell which of you it was, I suspect it was Nick, as he is the only one who knows I am a practising Marxist—and he persuaded me to come here.’

  ‘I didn’t know anything of the sort—and I’ve already told you I can’t write upside-down.’

  ‘Steady on,’ said Templer. ‘You can’t accuse a fellow guest of cheating at Planchette. Duels have been fought for less. This will turn into another Tranby Croft case unless we moderate our tone.’

  Quiggin made a despairing gesture at such frivolity of manner.

  ‘I can’t believe no one present knows the quotation, “Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one,”’ he said. ‘You will be telling me next you never heard the words, “The Workers have no country.”’

  ‘I believe Karl Marx has been “through” before,’ said Stripling, slowly and with great solemnity. ‘Wasn’t he a revolutionary writer?’

  ‘He was,’ said Quiggin, with heavy irony. ‘He was a revolutionary writer.’

  ‘Do let’s try again,’ said Mona.

  This time the writing changed to a small, niggling hand, rather like that of Uncle Giles.

  ‘He is sick.’
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  ‘Who is sick?’

  ‘You know well.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘In his room,’

  ‘Where is his room?’

  ‘The House of Books.’

  The writing was getting smaller and smaller. I felt as if I were taking part in one of those scenes from Alice in Wonderland in which the characters change their size.

  ‘What can it mean now?’ asked Mona.

  ‘You have a duty.’

  Quiggin’s temper seemed to have moved from annoyance, mixed with contempt, to a kind of general uneasiness.

  ‘I suppose it isn’t talking about St. John Clarke,’ I suggested.

  Quiggin’s reaction to this remark was unexpectedly violent. His sallow skin went white, and, instead of speaking with his usual asperity, he said in a quiet, worried voice: ‘I was beginning to wonder just the same thing. I don’t know that I really ought to have left him. Look here, can I ring up the flat—just to make sure that everything is all right?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Templer.

  ‘This way?’

  We tried again. Before Quiggin had reached the door, the board had moved and stopped. This time the result was disappointing. Planchette had written a single word, monosyllabic and indecent. Mona blushed.

  ‘That sometimes happens,’ said Mrs. Erdleigh, calmly.

  She spoke as if it were as commonplace to see such things written on blue ruled accounting paper as on the door or wall of an alley. Neatly detaching that half of the sheet, she tore it into small pieces and threw them into the waste-paper basket.

  ‘Only too often,’ said Stripling with a sigh.

  He had evidently accepted the fact that his enjoyment for that afternoon was at an end. Mona giggled.

  ‘We will stop now,’ said Mrs. Erdleigh, speaking with the voice of authority. ‘It is really no use continuing when a Bad Influence once breaks through.’

  ‘I’m surprised he knew such a word,’ said Templer.

  We sat for a time in silence. Quiggin’s action in going to the telephone possessed the force of one of those utterly unexpected conversions, upon which a notorious drunkard swears never again to touch alcohol, or a declared pacifist enlists in the army. It was scarcely credible that Planchette should have sent him bustling out of the room to enquire after St. John Clarke’s health, even allowing for the importance to himself of the novelist as a livelihood.

  ‘We shall have to be departing soon, mon cher,’ said Mrs. Erdleigh, showing Stripling the face of her watch.

  ‘Have some tea,’ said Templer. ‘It will be appearing at any moment.’

  ‘No, we shall certainly have to be getting along, Pete,’ said Stripling, as if conscious that, having been indulged over Planchette, he must now behave himself specially well. ‘It has been a wonderful afternoon. Quite like the old days. Wish old Sunny could have been here. Most interesting too.’

  He had evidently not taken in Quiggin’s reason for hurrying to the telephone, nor had any idea of the surprising effect that Planchette’s last few sentences had had on such a professional sceptic. Perhaps he would have been pleased to know that Quiggin had acquired at least enough belief to be thrown into a nervous state by those cryptic remarks. More probably, he would not have been greatly interested. For Stripling, this had been a perfectly normal manner of passing his spare time. He would never be able to conceive how far removed were such activities from Quiggin’s daily life and manner of approaching the world. In Stripling, profound belief had taken the place of any sort of halting imagination he might once have claimed.

  Quiggin now reappeared. He was even more disturbed than before.

  ‘I am afraid I must go home immediately,’ he said, in some agitation. ‘Do you know when there is a train? And can I be taken to the station? It is really rather urgent.’

  ‘Is he dying?’ asked Mona, in an agonised voice.

  She was breathless with excitement at the apparent confirmation of a message from what Mrs. Erdleigh called ‘the Other Side’. She took Quiggin’s arm, as if to soothe him. He did not answer at once, apparently undecided at what should be made public. Then he addressed himself to me.

  ‘The telephone was answered by Mark,’ he said, through his teeth.

  For Quiggin to discover Members reinstated in St. John Clarke’s flat within a few hours of his own departure was naturally a serious matter.

  ‘And is St. John Clarke worse?’

  ‘I couldn’t find out for certain,’ said Quiggin, almost wretchedly, ‘but I think he must be for Mark to be allowed back. I suppose St. J. wanted something done in a hurry, and told the maid to ring up Mark as I wasn’t there. I must go at once.’

  He turned towards the Templers.

  ‘I am afraid there is no train for an hour,’ Templer said, ‘but Jimmy is on his way to London, aren’t you, Jimmy? He will give you a lift.’

  ‘Of course, old chap, of course.’

  ‘Of course he can. So you can go with dear old Jimmy and arrive in London in no time. He drives like hell.’

  ‘No longer,’ said Mrs. Erdleigh, with a smile. ‘He drives with care.’

  I am sure that the last thing Quiggin wanted at that moment was to be handed over to Stripling and Mrs. Erdleigh, but there was no alternative if he wanted to get to London with the least possible delay. A curious feature of the afternoon had been the manner in which all direct contact between himself and Mrs. Erdleigh had somehow been avoided. Each no doubt realised to the full that the other possessed nothing to offer: that any exchange of energy would have been waste of time.

  In Quiggin’s mind, the question of St. John Clarke’s worsened state of health, as such, had now plainly given place to the more immediate threat of Members re-entering the novelist’s household on a permanent footing. His fear that the two developments might be simultaneous was, I feel sure, not necessarily based upon entirely cynical premises. In a weakened state, St. John Clarke might easily begin to regret his earlier suspension of Members as a secretary. Sick persons often vacillate. Quiggin’s anxiety was understandable. No doubt he regarded himself, politically and morally, as a more suitable secretary than Members. It was, therefore, reasonable that he should wish to return as soon as possible to the field of operations.

  Recognising at once that he must inevitably accompany the two of them, Quiggin accepted Stripling’s offer of conveyance. He did this with a bad grace, but at the same time insistently, to show there must be no delay now the matter had been decided. This sudden disintegration of the party was displeasing to Mona, who probably felt now that she had wasted her opportunity of having Quiggin in the house; just as on the previous day she had wasted her meeting with him in the Ritz. She seemed, at any rate, overwhelmed with vague, haunting regrets for the manner in which things had turned out; all that unreasoning bitterness and mortification to which women are so subject. For a time she begged them to stay, but it was no good.

  ‘But promise you will ring up.’

  She took Quiggin’s hand. He seemed surprised, perhaps even rather touched at the warmth with which she spoke. He replied with more feeling than was usual in his manner that he would certainly communicate with her.

  ‘I will let you know how St. J. is.’

  ‘Oh, do.’

  ‘Without fail.’

  ‘Don’t forget.’

  Mrs. Erdleigh, in her travelling clothes, had reverted to my first impression of her at the Ufford as priestess of some esoteric cult. Wrapped about with scarves, veils and stoles, she took my hand.

  ‘Have you met her yet?’ she enquired in a low voice.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Just as I told you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Mrs. Erdleigh smiled to herself. They piled into the car, Quiggin glowering in the back, hatless, but with a fairly thick overcoat. Stripling drove off briskly, sending the crisp snow in a shower from the wheels. The car disappeared into the gloomy shadows of the conifers.

  We returned to the drawing-room.
Templer threw himself into an armchair.

  ‘What a party,’ he said. ‘Poor old Jimmy really has landed something this time. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t have to marry that woman. She’s like Rider Haggard’s She—She who must be obeyed.’

  ‘I thought she was wonderful,’ said Mona.

  ‘So does Jimmy,’ said Templer. ‘You know, I can see a look of Babs. Something in the way she carries herself.’

  I, too, had noticed an odd, remote resemblance in Mrs. Erdleigh to his elder sister. However, Mona disagreed strongly, and they began to argue.

  ‘It was extraordinary all that stuff about Marx coming up,’ said Templer. ‘I suppose it was swilling about in old Quiggin’s head and somehow got released.’

  ‘Of course, you can never believe anything you can’t explain quite simply,’ said Mona.

  ‘Why should I?’ said Templer.

  Tea merged into drinks. Mona’s temper grew worse. I began to feel distinctly tired. Jean had brought out some work, and was sewing. Templer yawned in his chair. I wondered why he and his wife did not get on better. It was extraordinary that he seemed to please so many girls, and yet not her.

  ‘It was a pretty stiff afternoon,’ he said.

  ‘I enjoyed it,’ said Mona. ‘It was a change.’

  ‘It certainly was.’

  They began to discuss Planchette again; ending inevitably in argument. Mona stood up.

  ‘Let’s go out tonight.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘We could dine at Skindles.’

  ‘We’ve done that exactly a thousand and twenty-seven times. I’ve counted.’

  ‘Then the Ace of Spades.’

  ‘You know how I feel about the Ace of Spades after what happened to me there.’

  ‘But I like it.’

  ‘Anyway, wouldn’t it be nicer to eat in tonight? Unless Nick and Jean are mad to make a night of it.’

  I had no wish to go out to dinner; Jean was noncommittal. The Templers continued to argue. Suddenly Mona burst into tears.

  ‘You never want to do anything I want,’ she said. ‘If I can’t go out. I shall go to bed. They can send up something on a tray. As a matter of fact I haven’t been feeling well all day.’

  She turned from him, and almost ran from the room.