From London Far (32 page)
‘Dear me, no. To begin with, and after that one incredible glimpse of sky, we both lay insensible for some hours. The abrupt change of atmospheric pressure was doubtless responsible. When we came to consciousness again the submarine was rocking gently on an empty sea. We had a meal.’
‘Now, that’s what I call sensible.’ Mr Drummey was sincerely approving. ‘And I’m beginning to think we could all do with one ourselves.’
‘There is little more to tell. Alone on this derelict craft, with no other companions than four small boys rather beautifully cast in bronze, our situation was both alarming and untoward. But I think I am right in saying that our principal feeling was of a delicious sense of security. Even if we drowned we should now drown in a more or less ordinary way. Jean – Miss Halliwell – found a collapsed rubber raft, and this we were provident enough to inflate and place on deck. Fortunately so, as it turned out. For late in the afternoon, and without any further interference with the engines on our part, the submarine sank. We had just time to get in the raft and row out of danger’s way when the vessel turned on its side and disappeared. I regretted the fountain and whatever else of beauty might be on board. Nevertheless, I was glad to see the thing go. And that evening we were picked up by a British tanker. Our adventures seemed to be at an end. I don’t know whether I explained that it was by the notion of adventure – childish as it must seem – that Miss Halliwell and I had originally been prompted to set out.’
‘I guess you didn’t altogether miss your mark.’ Mr Drummey stared thoughtfully at his passengers. ‘But now here you are again: The Pantellis in their well-known adventurous role once more. What sense is there in that?’
‘Very little really, Mr Drummey.’ It was Jean who took up the tale. ‘We ought just to have thrown in our hand and contacted the police. Only Fate came along on that tanker and gave us a great nudge – a sort of monstrous hint. You see, the tanker proved to be bound for Tampico – and Tampico was the place where we knew Pantelli had been going to contact somebody from Mr Neff. It just didn’t seem right not to carry on through the next round. And we had one enormous advantage. The submarine was lost and, whether von Schwiebus was saved or not, the conclusion would be that his prisoners were drowned. That was what Mr Meredith meant by saying that at the headquarters of the International Society Don Perez and the rest would be dispirited, perhaps, but not alarmed. Moreover, as it had been a fake Pantelli who had appeared at Moila, it was not impossible that the real man might have decided to make Tampico some more comfortable way than in a lame-duck submarine. So why shouldn’t we go right ahead and act on that?’
‘It seems all crazy to me.’ Mr Drummey was exasperated. ‘And I’m not sure I get the present situation yet.’
‘But it’s simple enough! Pantelli was to cable Don Perez from Tampico to have the Giorgiones forwarded to Neff. If we did that cabling from Tampico and heard that the pictures were being delivered it would mean that Don Perez was taking it for granted that the real Pantelli had somehow turned up at Tampico as planned. Whereas, ten to one, the real Pantelli is being held by the military authorities somewhere on the Continent. Perhaps he’s dead. We’ve come to realize that people do die.’ Jean paused. ‘Anyway, that’s how we acted. Fortunately, Mr Meredith has a brother who’s with a British mission in Washington–’
‘Sure he has.’ Joe nodded emphatically. ‘All Englishmen have brothers with a mission Washington-way these days. Sisters too.’
‘–and he got us money and so on in no time. So now we’ve come on to sell those Giorgiones to Neff. We’re going to view all the paintings and what-not were ever stolen for him, and make an inventory of them, and finally do a real clean-up.’
‘A clean-up?’ Meredith frowned as if in some effort of memory. ‘Do you know, that is what I said I was going to do in the beginning? When I was being Vogelsang, you remember, and trying to intimidate that poor fellow Bubear.’
Mr Neff (who had made most of his millions between two wars) frequently and movingly declared himself to be a man of peace; and to mark this spiritual conviction he had given his country home the unassuming name of Dove Cottage. A beautiful little golden dove with rather expensive ruby eyes lived in a niche over the front door. It would pop out (this by means of a simple adaptation of the photo-electric cell) and brood symbolically over any visitor who approached, while at the same time there would float down from above the muted strains of massed choirs singing the ‘Jerusalem’ of William Blake. This transcendentalized cuckoo-clock Mr Neff had thought up entirely by himself.
In addition to believing in peace, Mr Neff believed in progress, and his architect had been instructed to express the spirit of progress in his plans for a beautiful home. The architect at the time of receiving his commission had been improving himself by extensive reading in the works of Freud; and it chanced that in the course of these studies he had just come upon a very celebrated place. This is the comparison of the human mind with the city of Rome – as the city of Rome would be were every phase of its development preserved intact, the Rome of each succeeding age being simply superimposed upon that preceding. If this development after the manner of geological strata was the way humanity chose to get along, might it not be possible (Mr Neff’s architect thought) to erect a veritable allegory of progress simply by building in sober fact what Freud had struck out by way of brilliant metaphor? Not, indeed, a Rome upon Rome – that would be laborious and perhaps a shade too costly as well – but a fantasia which should superimpose typical examples of one architectural epoch upon another?
From this bold conception rose Dove Cottage. Babylonish or Assyrian in those deepest foundations which housed only the multitudinous engines upon which the life of the Cottage depended, it rose at basement level to a species of insanely proliferating Norman crypt which provided store-rooms, and garage accommodation for the two or three hundred cars liable to turn up when Mr Neff was entertaining friends. Then (and serving for the main domestic offices) came a slightly reduced replica of Hampton Court. No choice could have been more judicious than this. For Hampton Court, being long, low, restrained, and flat-topped, is an excellent basis upon which to erect something striking. And to fulfil this latter function Mr Neff’s architect had picked on Wollaton Hall, a somewhat enlarged version of which would give approximately the accommodation Mr Neff required. Wollaton Hall can scarcely be called restrained; it displays a sort of passionate prodigality of balustrades, pilasters, pedestals, crestings, busts, and medallions in the improving upon which Mr Neff’s architect rather exhausted his energies for the while – with the result that what crowned each of the four angle towers was merely a small Queen Anne mansion in the severest taste. And, having achieved this, Mr Neff’s architect (who did not at all care for the nineteenth century) felt that he was about through. He therefore moved direct to the central tower of Wollaton Hall and boldly clapped upon it something austerely functional after the fashion of Le Corbusier. This topmost flight of fancy was always something of a white elephant until Mr Neff applied to it his own inventive genius and installed the swimming pool to which not a little of his just celebrity was owed.
It was to the swimming pool that Mr Flosdorf whisked Meredith and Jean in an express elevator which was appropriately embellished with a massively-sculptured Ascension after Bernini. Mr Flosdorf, rocketing his guests and the Ascension skywards, explained that Mr Neff was invisible and would so remain until evening. Evening was the time at which the great man’s aesthetic sensibilities were strongest and soundest and at which he commonly elected, therefore, to buy art. Did Mr Neff buy much art? Mr Flosdorf cautiously admitted to Signor Pantelli that his employer bought a fair deal: most of it, however, he gave away to museums, convents, and orphanages. Mr Neff was extremely charitable. Only last week he had given the Aquatic Club a fine Ingres of a lady standing beside a bath. He had given an El Greco to the Elks and several Alma-Tademas to the Sisters of St Joseph – which was particularly fine, seeing Mr Neff liked Alma-Tademas almost best of all. If Signor Pantelli knew of an Alma-Tadema to throw in with the Giorgiones he might find that he was doing himself a bit of good that way… And this was the swimming pool. They would find plenty of new bathing suits to choose from over there. The water was probably about right, but the temperature could be shifted ten degrees either way in just under the same number of minutes. And Mr Neff was rather proud of the dressing-rooms. He had thought them up himself.
The dressing-rooms, Meredith found, projected upon corbels from the main mass of this final eyrie of Dove Cottage. All six sides appeared from within to be of perfectly transparent glass; and thus while disrobing or disrobed one had an extensive view, not only of several hundred square miles of woods and lakes, but of the swimming pool itself and its immediate surroundings. Viewed from the outside, however, the dressing-rooms were so nearly opaque as to satisfy the strictest demands of modesty. This ingenious method of squaring the exhibitionistic instincts with decorum struck Meredith very much, and altogether unfavourably. He was hot and sticky; nevertheless, it was some minutes before he could bring himself to prepare for a dip; when he finally did so it was to find the swimming pool itself a good deal odder than the dressing-rooms.
It was a large circular tank some fifty feet in diameter by twelve feet high. The weight of water it contained must have been tremendous. Nevertheless, it simply rested on a flat roof much as if it were a goldfish bowl. Like a goldfish bowl, its sides appeared to be of glass. And, like a goldfish bowl, it contained fish.
Jean was already pressing her nose to whatever astounding plastic substance sustained this gigantic aquarium. Meredith did the same. The fishes – monstrous, and distorted monstrously by the curve of the tank – swam slowly by. Or, facing outward with gobbling mouths and faintly working fins, they stared sightlessly out over the tops of distant forests or into cloud. Suddenly Jean gave an involuntary backwards leap. A great fish had turned slowly over on its belly within inches of her. ‘But only look!’ she cried. ‘It’s a shark.’
It was certainly a shark – and a shark, as was immediately apparent, sparring with an octopus. And now the whole pool revealed itself as being like this. Numerous great fish swam round angrily snapping at each other in their restricted space, or contentedly swallowing little fish which dashed themselves in terrified shoals against the plastic in the hopeless effort at escape. Octopodes floated like vast tennis balls half ripped to ribbons. Creatures that were all spikes and spines diverted themselves by stabbing and lacerating neighbours less formidably armed. Crabs, with one great claw clinging like jockeys to rainbow-fish or perch, with the other dug out and devoured great collops of their steeds as they swam. And all this was as visible as if pierced by a searchlight. As in the poem (thought Meredith after his literary fashion), one
saw Too far into the sea, where every maw The greater on the less feeds evermore.
One also saw Mr Flosdorf, who appeared to be swimming about amid this submarine carnage unconcerned.
But, of course, the point about Mr Neff’s swimming pool was that it consisted of a tank within a tank. One climbed a ladder, walked rather nervously across a well-protected gangway, and was presently swimming securely enough within a sort of envelope or sleeve of fish-life. In Mr Neff’s view, fish-life was peculiarly well calculated to illustrate progress – particularly on that side of struggle, supercession, and rugged individualism which is one of the most salutary revelations of the evolutionary hypothesis. So now Mr Flosdorf swam about within a great ring of sharks and dog-fish, and presently Jean and Meredith were doing the same. The water was just right; being chemically treated, it was also peculiarly crystalline and peculiarly buoyant; one could lie on it as on an exquisitely sprung bed, with blue sky above, fish-life round about, and below stratum beneath stratum of architectural history.
It was all slightly fantastic, Meredith reflected as he and a large bottle-nosed shark swam deliberately towards each other on either side of the invisible plastic barrier. Perhaps by this time not only the Giorgiones but the Horton
Venus
had arrived down below. Perhaps Don Perez had decided to part with Vermeer’s
Aquarium
and Mr Neff was now the owner of that as well. Perhaps he was thinking up striking ways of utilizing his new property – bringing Vermeer’s marine creatures up here to jostle with his own or converting the Titian into a gigantic lampshade or waste-paper basket. Much struck by the possibility of these horrors, Meredith felt that there was no time to be lost. In the middle of the pool was anchored a small raft, and upon this Mr Flosdorf was now hospitably preparing drinks. Meredith swam towards it and climbed out of the water. ‘I suppose’, he said, ‘that Mr Neff’s pictures keep you busy pretty well all the time?’
Flosdorf looked startled and wary. But then he nodded. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Job depends on them, if you’d like to know.’
‘Ah.’ Meredith was sympathetic. ‘Makes it all a bit ticklish, doesn’t it?’
This was an arrow sent obscurely into the dark; nevertheless, Meredith felt that it had scored some sort of hit. Flosdorf took a hasty drink and looked cautiously around him. ‘See here, Signor Pantelli,’ he said, ‘are you trading those Giorgiones on your own?’
‘Not altogether. I’ve been working in with the International Society a good deal.’
‘That so? Know the folks?’
‘Dear me, yes. I know Don Perez very well. Failing a bit, I’m afraid. Losing grip on details. Properjohn’s the coming man. By the way, he sent you his regards.’ Fibs, Meredith found, always tended to come jerkily at first. ‘Yes,’ he continued more fluently, ‘the control is really falling to Properjohn. The last time I saw him he had just been promoted to run another important department.’ And Meredith, seeing in his mind’s eye the fallen Laird of Carron amid his crates and boxes, nevertheless nodded at Flosdorf with the largest conviction. ‘A really clever fellow and sees a good long way ahead. And I think he’s been uneasy about Neff for some time.’