That evening, over dinner at court, the Queen made his loss of favour clear to all by calling for Gawain to pass her the peaches. The next day the whole town was talking about it. Whenever Lancelot entered a room in the palace, the laughter instantly stopped and the ladies of the court gazed at him with tears in their eyes.
Lancelot threw himself into gambling, won steadily, bought himself three new horses and a first-class sword, and went carefully through his bailiff’s accounts. He took out two books he had purchased in his youth, Cato’s Wise Sayings and Peter Abelard’s enthralling tome on the Holy Trinity that had caused such stir in its day. He resolved to make himself perfect in the Latin language. Suddenly his life had so much more scope than before. And it pained him grievously. What pained him beyond words was that he was no longer miserable.
The time came when he could deny it no longer, and could even say it out loud:
“I do not love Queen Guinevere.”
The whole miracle was both ugly and incomprehensible. Such things did not happen in the course of nature. You might lose a pair of spurs, or an overcoat. You could even mislay, as he once had, a sword. But not Love! Except of course by magic. And he remembered the night he had spent at Chatelmerveil.
Lancelot was a man of action. He was instantly on his horse and speeding towards Klingsor’s castle.
From his tower the magician saw him coming and hurried out to greet him.
“He’s come to thank me for my kindness,” he whispered, and tears welled up in his eyes.
But Lancelot leapt down from the saddle and most decisively seized the magician by the beard.
“You scoundrel!” he bellowed. “Uncle of dogs and lover of bitches! But why do I waste words? Give me back my Love this minute!”
“Oh, oh, oh,” sobbed Klingsor. “So you haven’t been any happier all this time? Don’t you see now how much broader life is, and how full of interesting things, when you’re not bound hand and foot to Love?”
“Stop mouthing, you cousin of toads and hedgehogs, fiend and Devil and all his works!” Lancelot added vigorously, and gave Klingsor’s beard a twist. “Give me back my Love, this minute!”
“As you wish,” Klingsor replied, with a disappointed sigh.
He led Lancelot into the castle. From the row of bottles he took down the one with “Amor, amoris, masc.” on the label, cut the string and lifted the Love spirit out with his pincers. He wrapped it in a wafer and handed it to Lancelot, who swallowed it with a glass of water.
A few seconds later Lancelot shuddered violently. His entire body and soul were torn with pain. His knees shook, his head buzzed and the world darkened before his eyes.
“I have lost the Queen’s favour!” he gasped. He clutched his throat and dashed out without so much as a word of farewell.
The pain was so intense he had difficulty staying on the horse. His tears flowed, and he lowered the crest of his helmet so that no one would notice his shame. But they flowed so copiously that they leaked out under the visor and ran down his armour.
And he was happy.
1935
THE INCURABLE
PETER RARELY was on his way home by train from Inverness in the Scottish Highlands, where he supported a course for students on the bagpipes, at his own expense, since everyone was complaining that with the advance of the gramophone and the radio this illustrious and ancient form of music was dying out. He had just been up for the closing ceremony and was feeling very pleased with the way things had gone. If only my bear sanctuary would do as well, he mused. Another of his great concerns was that these remarkable animals had become extinct in the British Isles, and he had made a home in the Welsh forests for some bears imported from Transylvania.
But his main worry was his number-counters. He had hired some unemployed people to count up to 7,300,000 without stopping. Two had already given up, three were still counting, but when he had left London even the best of them had only managed something like 1,250,000. Where might he have got up to since?
In the express dining car he caught sight of a familiar face. It was the writer Tom Maclean. Maclean was sitting on his own, sipping spoonfuls of mock turtle soup, gazing thoughtfully into the distance, and jotting down the occasional word on his notepad.
“May I?” Rarely asked, settling himself down beside the writer. “I’m not disturbing you?”
“You certainly are, very much so,” Maclean replied with obvious delight. “Please stay and disturb me some more. It would be a real kindness.”
Rarely began to feel somewhat alarmed. The thought had flashed through his mind that he might not be the most eccentric person on the train.
“Because, you see, I’m working,” Maclean continued. “I’m preparing notes for a radio broadcast about my Scottish experiences. At least while I’m talking to you I won’t be working. Sir, the amount I have to do is intolerable. I’m fed up with myself, absolutely fed up. I’ve just been to Scotland for a bit of a rest. I tell you — I was there for a month — in that time I translated a novel from the French, wrote two essays and a novella, eight sketches for the Morning Glory, six book reviews for the Spectator and ten longer articles for a forthcoming lexicon entitled Women, Children and Dogs in the Service of Humanity. And I’ve still got two radio talks waiting to be done.”
“That’s very interesting,” said Rarely. “I always thought that writers like you lay around all day waiting for inspiration, and then wrote only once it had struck. You seem to have a lot more to do than my own rather simpler sort of millionaire.”
“I’ve no idea how hard a millionaire works, because I heartily dislike those sort of people, present company always excepted, of course. But the number of things I have to deal with has become more than I can bear. You’ve just heard what my holiday consisted of. You can imagine how much I do when I’m actually working. I have to submit two novels to my publisher every year, three articles for the paper every week… then there are my book reviews and reader’s reports. I have to dash off the odd novella to show that I am still a creative writer, plus the odd bit of scholarship, so that I don’t get dulled by all the other writing; oh, yes, and the publicity notices for my friend’s books, and the little demolition jobs on those by my enemies… What does all that come to?”
“Monstrous. How do you manage it? When do you do all this writing?”
“You should really be asking, when do I not? I fall asleep writing, and wake up writing. I plan my hero’s fate in my dreams, and the moment I open my eyes the signing-off phrase for my radio broadcast comes into my head.”
“And when do you live?”
“Never. I’ve no time for sport, and none for love. For years the only women I’ve spoken to have been the ones bringing manuscripts, and believe me, they aren’t the most congenial. But that’s not the real problem. The problem is finding time to read.”
“But you’ve just been telling me about your book reviews and reader’s reports… You must surely have to read those, at least.”
“Oh yes, sir, I read an appalling amount — six or seven hours a day. But only the sort of things that publishers and editors lumber me with, or books I need for something I’m writing. Do you know, I would really love to read a book purely for its own sake. Something that’d be of no use to me whatsoever. The stories of Hans Christian Andersen, for example. For years I’ve been dying to read The Ugly Duckling and I’ve never got round to it.”