The Towers of Trebizond (28 page)

"My dear Tim," said Vere, "it's obvious every Sunday morning what he's doing with it."

I had not told Vere, but of course every one thought I had, and I saw the light dawn.

I was sorry then, and tried to put the light out.

"I suppose he admires Charles's writing, and is rather aping it. It's quite natural, because David hasn't actually got much of a style of his own. Now look, for heaven's sake don't put it about that I said that, I mean what Vere said. It's entirely untrue."

"But that's what David threw his hock cup at Henry for saying at the Hamiltons' party, wasn't it?"

"I don't know. It happened before I got there. I never knew what it was in aid of, and I think David was too tight to know either. No one ever seems to know for certain why any one has thrown his drink about, it always sounds idiotic when they try to tell."

"Well," said the Roman Catholic, "I heard that was why. It seems pretty reasonable. But, if David is really passing off Charles's work as his, and is going to use it in his book too, there ought to be a first-class row. I mean, Charles's family or friends ought to take it up and queer the pitch. What about you, Laurie?"

"Certainly not. I know nothing, and it's no business of mine."

"Would you think he still has Charles's originals, or has taken copies of the lot by now?"

"I've no idea. And I think we'd better forget it. It's really no business of ours."

"Well, it s bound to get about. All of us here will dine out on it, for one thing."

"I shan't."

"I didn't know you felt so loyal to David. I thought it was Charles you knew well. What's David offered you?"

I did not like this conversation. I had betrayed David, broken my promise, and I was remembering all the meals he had given me on my journey to Iskenderon, and the drive in his car and the archaeology he had told me about, and the money he had advanced, and how earnestly he had bribed me, and how he had perhaps trusted me, though more probably not, and how now he would be talked against and despised, and might get into trouble, with Charles's family and with his publishers, only after all nothing could be proved, it would be his word against their suspicions, and I should say nothing, so as time passed he would live it down. But I wondered what the reviewers would say about his book when it came out. I thought he would very likely ask me to review it, if ever he trusted me again. For my part, I decided to go out of London for the present and stay at aunt Dot's, which she always let me do when she was away if I wanted to. There I could get on with my own book, and I thought I would fetch my ape, which would soon be out of quarantine, and go on teaching it chess and driving, and start it on croquet, which it might be quite clever at. All this would distract my mind from my own worries and problems, I thought.

We finished talking about Charles and David, and started the game of adapting well-known lines of poetry or prose to suit our acquaintances and guessing who was meant, such as "Lobsters I loved, and after lobsters, sex," and the evening ended cheerfully. The night went well too, as Vere and I spent it together.

Soon after this I collected my ape from its quarantine and went down to aunt Dot's house near Abingdon with it, and with my sister Meg, who was a Roman Catholic, owing to have married one, and had so many children that sometimes she had to get right away from family life to relax. Meg and I had always been friends, and we were both fond of aunt Dot, and we both were allowed to stay in her house when we felt like it, with the elderly servant called Emily who looked after it. We sometimes had friends there for week-ends, and often Vere drove over from Oxford and spent a night, and, as Meg and I were together, Emily was not shocked at this.

I was determined to educate the ape, and to find out how high it could climb up the path of civilization, and how near to a man or woman it could get. It would, I thought, shed some light on human progress from the ape stage. Meg had a notion that it could not develop a soul, as she held that this was a solely human privilege, and in fact her Church teaches this. But she could never explain to me precisely what a soul was, and where the line comes that divides a soul from the kind of consciousness and psyche that animals have. I am not sure what my own Church teaches on this matter, and it may be the same, but I do not take much notice, and, my Church being more elastic, it is probably open to fresh light. Anyhow, I was interested to see how far my Stamboul ape would get. Its chess was only moderate, because, as I said earlier, it copies all my moves. I wondered how much it understood of the moves and their consequences, but it would take my pieces as I took its pieces, and remove them from the board. It really seemed more at home with draughts, and also played a quite good snakes and ladders, but was furious when it came to a snake and had to go back. When it was angry, and particularly at croquet, a game which engendered in it as much fury as it does in other beings, it set up a great gibbering and chattering, and whenever it could it cheated. As I was trying to start it in moral sense, I spoke to it very sharply about this, and put on its collar and chain as a punishment, but I was not sure if it fully understood. As a partner it was very good; we would play together against Meg with her two balls, and it had a very precise aim and powerful force; all I had to do was to indicate what ball it was to make for, and it would hit it from any distance and send it to the other end of the lawn. Sometimes we played tennis, and at this it was better still, it had a very fine overhand service and a tremendous volley from the back line, and when it hit me on the head with the ball it was because it had tried to. It was an excitable player, dancing about and somersaulting in triumph when it had sent an untakable return, throwing its racket at the net when it had missed a ball, and pelting its opponent with balls with the strength with which its ancestors had no doubt flung coconuts at their enemies in their native jungles. A little more training in etiquette and sportsmanship, and it would easily qualify for Wimbledon. I saw no reason why there should not be an apes' four and singles, which would bring in a wonderful gate.

Meg was against my putting an L on my car and teaching the ape to drive, but to my mind driving was a crucial test of brain, and I persevered. At first I only took it along the private road through the field, where it did no harm when it ran off on to the grass. It grasped the wheel very strongly and firmly in its hands, after watching me do it for some time, and turned it right or left as I directed with my arms, and when it began to turn the wrong way, I held the wheel and turned it myself, which vexed it rather, as it was very vain, and it would shove me away with its elbow and finish the turning itself. Changing gears was a little harder, and I am not sure if it ever quite understood the principle underlying this, but then I am not sure if I do myself. It soon grasped that it must press down the clutch with its foot whenever it moved the gear lever, but when to move this, and in which direction, and why, troubled it a good deal, and for some time I had to manipulate it, covering its hands with mine. Then I stopped doing this, and merely said "Change down," or "Change up," jerking my arm down and up as I said it, and in time it mastered not only the straight ups and downs, but the first to second (my car only had three, fortunately) which had an elbow to it. It seemed to me definitely quicker at every branch of the driving art than most human learners, owing to being such a good mimic and not trying to work it out with its brain. But it seemed to have difficulty in connecting the low position of the petrol indicator needle with the stoppage of the car, or either with my getting out and pouring stuff from a can into the hole at the back, though I always made it get out too and watch me. I did not know how soon it would be up to opening the boot and getting a petrol tin out and pouring it into the tank for itself, or to stopping at a public petrol pump for it. In any case I did not see how it was likely to get any that way, as it would not be able to say how much it wanted, or to pay for it, so I decided that it must not go driving alone when the tank was low.

It had a tendency to speed, pressing on the accelerator with all its might, and also continuously on the horn, which it enjoyed greatly. I forbade it to do this except when something was in the road in front of it, but I was never sure that it understood about this, though it listened attentively to me and I could see it was trying to follow, by the way it frowned and ground its teeth. I showed it how, when I was at the wheel, I hooted, but only slightly, when anything was in the way, but not at other times, and I hoped it took this in, but it had a great tendency to exaggeration and overdoing, and I saw that it would be a hooting driver. The postman and the newspaper boy on their bicycles, who used the field path, were rather alarmed by its style of driving, and the people in the village began to talk, but I assured them that everything was under control. One day it got alone into the car, which was aunt Dot's small Morris and was standing in the drive with the engine key in, and it started it up and drove off alone through the gate on to the field path, where it put on a tremendous speed and rushed along with the horn blaring after the gardener, who was pushing a wheelbarrow full of leaves for burning. The gardener barely had time to leap aside on to the grass edge, leaving the barrow, and the Morris crashed right into it and broke it up and bent a wing. The gardener was very angry about this, and so was I. Meg and I came back from a walk to find a scene of rage going on, the gardener shaking a stick at the ape, the ape blaring the horn and gibbering at the gardener, who did not dare to get very near it.

The gardener told me and Meg that the ape had no right to be on the road; Meg rather agreed, but I explained that the road was a private one and I said I would pay for the barrow. The gardener said, "Mrs. ffoulkes-Corbett won't be best pleased about her car, nohow," and I was not best pleased either, as the insurance did not cover accidents caused by L drivers driving alone, and I should have to pay.

I was very much vexed with the ape, and told it so in no uncertain manner. The gardener said he would know what to do to it if it was his, and looked at his stick, but I did not approve of corporal punishment and would not thrash it. Instead, I spoke to it very sharply, and chained it up for the rest of the day and gave it the dullest kind of food, and did not take it out driving for two days, and then did all the driving myself, which always vexed it. It seemed ashamed of itself, and I thought it was increasing in conscience and sense of sin. I was teaching it a little religion (Anglican), which Meg thought was wrong, her Church being rather narrow about animals, and she would not have allowed it to go with her to her church, but I took it, on the lead, to mine, where it behaved quite well, sitting and standing and kneeling when I did, and it was a great interest to the congregation and choir at Mass, but the Vicar did not care for it, he thought it distracted people's attention and was not really reverent. It always rather enjoyed being an object of interest, as it was vain and exhibitionist, but how much it knew about where it was, I did not know. I liked the way it fell on its knees at the right place in the creed, seeing other people do it and not waiting to be pulled. When the congregation made the responses and joined in the service, it joined too, softly chattering. I taught it to genuflect as I did when we went into our seats. Soon I saw that it was crossing itself too, and I was not quite sure that it ought to be doing this, it seemed going rather far, but it liked it, and did it again and again, even when no one else did, its tendency to excess and showing off coming out as usual, and the vicar and the churchwardens did not much like this. It was certainly a very devout Anglo-Catholic, though I fancied that it might be also something of an Anglo-Agnostic. During the sermon it leant against me and fell asleep, snoring a little, because it was rather old-fashioned, and possibly something of an anti-clerical too. I thought it was a very fine convert from the Moslem religion, to which I suppose it had nominally belonged before. But I suspected that if any one took it to a Billy Graham meeting, it would follow the crowd up and decide for conversion in a rather impulsive and shallow way, and I remembered the parrot in the seventeenth century play which was converted to Calvinism by a serving-woman.

Yesterday I went

To see a lady that
has
a parrot; my woman converted the fowl,

And now it can speak naught but Knox'
s
words
;

So there's a parrot lost
.

I should not have cared to see that happen to my ape, so I decided that it should stick to Anglican churches, eschewing both Knox and the Romans, and it seemed to take very kindly to this, becoming almost foolishly extreme, and I thought Father Chantry-Pigg would be pleased with it. Besides religion and driving and games, I trained it to help in the garden, weeding and mowing and planting, and it seemed to be developing some social and civic sense, much more rapidly than our ancestors did, for I suppose we live in more rapid times. As it seems that one of the first things done in primitive life is drawing and painting pictures on walls, I took it to the garage and painted pictures of men and women and animals on the white-washed walls below the church gargoyles. Then I gave a brush to the ape (whose name was Suliman, the Turk who sold it to me had said, and it sometimes answered to it, but I thought I really should give it a more Christian name, now that it had become so High Church), and let it try for itself. It was very pleased, and chattered to itself as it painted, and made bold sweeps with the brush, dipping it in the tin of red paint as it had seen me do, and its painting was not at all bad for a beginner, and it must be true that one of the most primitive activities is making pictures, as one sees if an infant over nine months old gets hold of a pencil or brush. Our ancestors used to paint bisons a great deal, owing to hunting these animals, and I watched to see if Suliman painted anything like the wheelbarrow which he had hunted and caught, but I could not identify one of these; of course he was pretty smudgy at first, so some of his pictures may have been wheelbarrows. I could see he was going to be a painter of the abstract type, and rather surrealist in style, and when he did what he seemed to mean for an animal or human being he usually put both the eyes on the same side of the profile, which small children and surrealists also tend to do. I rather like this myself, as it is nice to know what both a person's eyes look like, and also one can see people with an eye on each side all about, without having them also in pictures. Still, I thought Suliman ought to try and be a little representational too, and hoped that this would come with time.