The Acceptance World - Anthony Powell [40]
‘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.’
‘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.