Cock o' the Forth

By KINGSLEY AMIS

BUT for surprisingly vivid memories of that five-bob flip at Croydon Aerodrome in 1934 (in a DH Dragon-Rapide, if you really want to know) I should probably have let myself be talked into joining the rest of the party on the Edinburgh plane, for money (it not being my Money) was no object. As it was, my wife and I went up on the first-class non-sleeper from King's Cross, stumbling finally into the foier of the North British not long after seven on the Sunday morning. I had not found inconceivable the thought of being greeted by a little crowd of multi- national zealots—'Ah, Master, there is you and there is Shakespeare and possibly there is Balzac, but there is no one else'—or at the very worst by a kilted, dirk-brandishing posse of Lallans poets : 'Amis, gang hame.' Instead there was a whole crowd of Americans, milling devotedly around and shouting out to one another in regard to lochs and cameras. Before breakfast, too.

A little later Theo was telling us what we had missed the previous evening. The chief thing had been the visit to the night club, or perhaps even- ing club : no drinks to be purchased, nor even so much as given away, after eleven. The open- ing item in the cabaret had been a sample of Scottish country dancing, dumbfoundingly enough, with music provided by a Scottish piper. Then Terry had done a short impromptu turn. Then a fourteen-year-old boy had sung some rock 'n' roll, with eloquent bodily movements. Then, despite the manager's entreaties that they stay and meet a real Edinburgh aristocrat de- clared to be present, the party had gone back to the hotel to finish their dinner, from which, the ravioli still hot in their mouths, they had been summarily driven three hours earlier. Right at the end of the evening John had found a bottle of wine.

Edinburgh looked a trifle on the unfestive side as we drove through it, packed into the Daimlers, on the way to the press show. Although the Castle made its point successfully, there seemed in general far too many buildings in the place and they were far too like the sky in colour. Theo was rather quiet, no doubt dreading a fur- ther encounter with the pursuing journalist who had done much to rob the previous evening of gaiety and who had finally had to be marooned on foot while Theo and the others fled by car. John outlined to me some of the conversations about Edinburgh conversation he had attended. Terry cheered us up by telling a story about an elephant that shook its head instead of nodding it, as well it might in the circumstances revealed.

We got to where the press show was gOing to be. There were drinks. Inextricably packaged up with the drinks were constant introductions to and by assorted cultural bureaucrats and re-

porters of the things of the mind. Very many of these were associated with Edinburgh, very many more with other parts of Scotland. One of the former took me aside, so far as this was possible amid the pushing and shoving tumult that radi- ated from the table where the drinks were originating. With a dedicated gravity befitting hardly anything less than an announcement that he was about to run away with my wife, he said : 'Do you know Edinburgh well? How well do you know Edinburgh?'

'Not well, I'm afraid. I was here in 1943, stay- ing at—' 'I mean since then. Recently. Since the war.' 'I'm afraid this is the first time since then.'

'This is Mr. Duerinks from Belgium, from Brussels. Which parts of Scotland do you know best, then?'

'Well, I'm afraid I can't really say I know any parts well. I did have a holiday at North Berwick once. It was very—' 'North Berwick, yes. When was that?'

'Oh . . . about 1928, I suppose.'

'That was a long time ago.'

1 was left to digest this rebuke in the company of Mr. Duerinks, who asked me whether I thought a film should be made of a book. 1 said I did.

Lunch was the next event, preceded, accom- panied and followed by more drinks. The event after that was the rehearsal of the evening's stage business at the picture theatre, accompanied throughout its entire course—except for an inter- val when a piper was playing the pipes—by the organist playing the organ. His selection featured 'Colonel Bogey' to a degree that showed long and profound intimacy with the work. He wanted to use it (treated staccato, allegro vivo) to introduce everyone who was going to appear on the stage before the film showing and he was still perform- ing it (largamente, misterioso) when we left. Time now seemed to be getting short. At any rate it was only a few drinks later that Terry and I were debouching from a landau among a rather small crowd that had gathered at the theatre, and it was no drinks at all after that that we were debouching a second time for the benefit of a laggard newsreel camera. The stage business went off all right, the film even better. Then there was a reception, with drinks.

'This is the Lady Provost of Dundee and the Lady Provost of Aberdeen and the Lord Provost of Aberdeen and the Lord Provost of Dundee. This is the author.'

'How marvellous.'

'What of?'

'This Lucky Jim thing. Oh, by the way, I don't know whether Mr. Alexander mentioned it to you, but my paper is the Bruddersford Argus. Now tell me, Mr. Amis, how does it feel to have a film made of your novel? Are you satisfied with the adaptation?'

'Yes, indeed. You see, I intended it to be a funny book and so—' 'But surely, Mr. Amis, the sociological impli- cations of your satire have been altogether lost, haven't they?' 'I'm afraid I don't bother with any of that because the chief thing to me is that it's sup- posed to be a funny 'But surely, Mr. Amis, you wrote a comedy of manners in the Welfare State. Just a minute, I must catch Mr. Boulting.'

'You won't know me. I write for a living. I live by writing. It's a struggle, of course, but I think it's worth it. What do you feel about that? You don't live by your pen, do you?'

'This is Mr. Macneil and Mr. and Mrs. Wallace and Mr. Smith and Miss Bain and Mr. Johnstone.'

It was all a bit like that : tiring, you know, but an experience. Everybody was very kind and the representatives of the film-distribution company featherbedded us manfully through the whole thing. All the same, I felt a flicker of sympathy with the man who created a disturbance in the bookshop next morning. (I was there to sign copies of my work and hardly a quarter of an hour passed without my services being called for.) The disturbance-creator was in motor-bike kit a la Brando and he was beating the air with his arms. 'The maps!' he was calling. 'Where are the maps? The maps!' There comes a moment when you simply have to get away.