The Alteration

by Kingsley Amis

  'Forgive me, sir,' said Hubert a moment later, 'but are you sure this is the right occasion? Your guests are here to enjoy the company and the—'

  'My guests will feel mightily balked if I don't give them what I promised them, be assured of that.'

  'The young children won't enjoy it, will they?'

  'Any child, young or not so young, who does not will be removed into the garden: I've given instructions. So...'

  Van den Haag's gesture indicated the piano-forte by which, having mounted a low dais at the far end of the room, they now stood. It was handsomely cased in rosewood; more important to Hubert, it was one of the new six-octave instruments by Satie of Paris. Master Morley would have approved, and perhaps shown some surprise.

  'This a very fine piece, sir.'

  'I'm glad you think well of it, Hubert.' Van den Haag handed over the satchel Hubert had brought. 'What's your selection to be? You can hardly give us everything you have there.'

  'I thought you might advise me, sir.'

  'No, it must be what you yourself prefer, my boy.'

  'Thank you, sir. Then... the little Mozart song, "L'alouette en haut", the Schumann, "Nun muss ich fort", and the Valeriani, "I miei sospiri". A mixture of the...'

  'Of the familiar and the less familiar, just so. May I see the Mozart? Ah, of course, K.308b, the third of the set. I think I may be able to handle that. Yes, Hubert-you shouldn't stare so, it isn't very gladdening—I mean to accompany. I won't disgrace you, I undertake.'

  Hubert's recital was a great success. He knew himself he had never sung better, and it was obvious to him why: he had never in the past had anybody to sing for as that afternoon he had Hilda. Yet Hilda was nowhere to be seen-perhaps she was hidden behind someone else, perhaps she was listening from outside the room. At the end of the Valeriani he bowed briefly three times, waited for the considerable applause to die away, thanked van den Haag for his accompaniments, which had indeed been deft for a dilettante, and stepped down from the dais to signal the end of his performance. There were many calls for an extra, but he knew from experience that the attention of an audience of this kind would not remain intact after fifteen minutes at the most. He received personal congratulations from a Polish dignitary, from a priest with a Scandinavian accent, from a member of the Royal Opera House Company, even from Louis; not from Hilda. Then suddenly he saw her in the sun at the threshold of the garden doorway, and without thinking started towards her. Van den Haag was quickly at his side.

  'Hubert will need to relax himself after his efforts, my dear. Will you kindly conduct him round the garden? And well-minded, nay?'

  Two pairs of blue eyes looked into one another for a moment. Then the girl said, 'Oh, best. Ya ya, paps.'

  The garden was quite unlike the one behind the house in Tyburn Road. Except for two paved walks and a circular area partly surrounded by a clipped hedge of some yellowish shrub, it seemed almost wild, although there was colour enough. Hubert noticed a ground creeper with large purple-and-white flowers like inverted bells. He said, pointing, 'Is that a plant from New England?'

  'Yes, I think so.' Hilda spoke with encouraging friendliness. 'Many of the plants here come from home.'

  'Did your father put it there? It must grow quickly.'

  'It was there when we came. My father says New Englanders are living here since over a hundred years. The first was a man called Jefferson Davis.'

  'Oh, yes,' said Hubert sagely, and added with as much conviction as he could muster, 'This is a very pretty garden.'

  'Thank you. Did the folk enjoy your singing just then?'

  'I think so. Everybody was polite.'

  In silence, the boy and girl crossed the circular space, which had nothing at its centre, and left it on the further side through a gap in the hedge. They were not the only two in the garden, but nobody else was near. Abruptly, and in a flat tone, Hilda said, 'I didn't hear it.'

  'Forgive me?'

  'I didn't hear your singing. Well, I heard it in the distance, but I didn't listen to it. One of the little children was unhappy, so I carried him out here and talked to him and told him stories and gave him flowers.'

  They had reached what amounted to a small wood, mainly of young trees. One of them had suffered some minor malformation during growth such that, a yard or so from the ground, its trunk leaned over at almost forty-five degrees for another yard before resuming the vertical. Hilda went over to it, joined her hands round the inclined part and hung back at the length of her arms, looking up through the branches.

  'That was kind of you,' said Hubert. 'To look after the little child.'

  'It was nothing.' She began rhythmically pulling her body up so as to touch the trunk with her chest, then lowering herself again. 'Are you disappointed that I didn't listen to your singing?'

  'Yes.'

  'Why?'

  'Why? Surely you can see why. Singing is what I do best. If you had listened to me, you might have begun to admire me, and after that you might have begun to like me.'

  Without stopping her exercise, Hilda brought her head down and looked at him. He felt in himself a kind of tension he had not known before; it was touched with bewilderment and a vague but powerful longing. As abruptly as a moment earlier, but in a different voice, she said, 'Copann a me, thart a precious honest cooly, hoke. Kisah-kihitin.'

  'What? What do you say?'

  'That's how the people talk in New. England. See, I haven't forgotten.'

  'But when I asked you before... What does it mean?'

  'That you're honest.'

  'Thank you, but I understood that-it was all I did understand. But you said more than that. What was that last word? Was it a word?'

  'It was Indian. Now don't ask more.' She released the tree-trunk and stood facing him a yard away or less. 'You don't look like a little man. That was trash. You simply look more than ten years.'

  Hubert felt a tingling at the back of his neck. Although neither of them made any move, he was always to say to himself afterwards that they would have kissed then if no one had come along. But someone did: Louis in his frilled shirt and chequered stockings, smiling, swinging his arms.

  'So you hide in the woods,' he said amiably. 'Come back to the festa, Hilda. There's to be a game of Old Mother Broomstick.'

  'Oh, that I mustn't miss.'

  She started for the house with Louis at her side and Hubert following.

  Father Matthew Lyall struck a phosphorus and lit the gas-lamp in his room above the express-house. At first sight it was very much a priest's room: small, low-ceilinged, barely furnished, containing indeed only a bed, a chair, a writing-table, a press and a chest-of-drawers in unvarnished wood, a prie-dieu and some hundreds of books. The walls, done over with a dark wash, were bare except for the legally-required crucifix and pious picture—in this case a Virgin and Child identical with millions to be seen throughout Christendom in the habitations of the people. The bed was somewhat larger than one person might have been expected to have a use for, but Father Lyall was a restless sleeper and needed the extra space, or so he would say. The chair was unusually comfortable, but that was no more than the due of a man given to meditation. It was far less obvious that the books, except for a few dozen in unlettered bindings, never left their places on the shelves, and not obvious at all that the press hid several suits of decidedly secular clothing, a couple of bottles of old geneva, and a store of preventative sheaths.

  Lyall screwed up his eyes and yawned: it was late, past ten o'clock, and supper had not been an easy occasion. That morning, Dame Anvil had responded with a violent display of passion to the news, delivered jointly by her husband and Lyall, that the alteration of her younger son was proposed. At table, Master Anvil had addressed her only on indifferent matters, and so she had had to keep her emotions to herself, or rather had not spoken of them: she had made them plain enough in other ways. Lyall took her behaviour for little more than a piece of feminine self-assertion, and it would certainly be useful to him if he were to
decide to carry further his obstruction of Abbot Thynne's wishes; at the same time, it had done nothing to improve his relations with Anvil, who had made it equally plain that he saw Lyall as the instrument, if not the instigator, of the lady's capriccios.

  But (the priest told himself) he must not be uncharitable towards somebody who suffered: if Dame Anvil really felt one-tenth of what she professed to feel, she was to be pitied. He would pray for her mind to be eased, not an altogether straightforward task. Praying for her had recently become apt to turn without apparent transition into thinking about her, thinking thoughts too that ill suited the occasion.

  He had taken off his gown and was just unfastening his collar when he heard quiet footsteps on the steep right-angled stairway that ran up from the corner of the express-house. There was a tap at his door.

  'Who is it?'

  'Dame Anvil. May I come in?'

  Discretion pointed two opposite ways: for her to be in his room at night was bad enough in itself, but what might she not do if refused entry in her present state? Inclination settled the matter.

  'Of course,' he said.

  Carrying a bare candle, she stood on the threshold as if there was nothing left of whatever impulse had brought her so far. The priest hurried over, shut the door behind her and took and blew out the candle.

  'Dame, this is most unwise. What if you were discovered here?'

  She smiled, showing her fine teeth. 'You're my spiritual guide, Father.'

  'Much heed your husband would pay to that.'

  'My husband has gone to the gaming-rooms down Tyburn Lane. He won't be back before midnight.'

  'The express is below.'

  'He walked. And nobody in the house knows where I am.'

  'What do you want with me? Can't it wait till the morning?'

  'Come now, Father, you know what I want with you, and if it could wait I should have let it.'

  'Very well. My excuses, dame, but you startled me a little. Please sit down. And try to be calm.'

  'I am calm. I haven't come here to say all over again what I said this morning. I've come to ask you about something I didn't know then. When my husband told me that he and all the men at St Cecilia's, that everyone concerned had agreed on this thing, you were silent. And you were silent when I called it a barbarity and an abomination and fit only for Turks and whatever else I called it. But I've since learned that you had already refused to sign the document authorising it.'

  'Your husband and I had differed on the matter earlier. It would have been improper for me to continue the argument in your presence.'

  'I understand that, Father. It wasn't what I meant to ask you about. There was something to the effect that you had some days to decide finally whether or not to give your consent. You will of course persist in withholding it?'

  'I've not yet had time to consider the issues fully.'

  'But what is there to consider?'

  'The... interests of the child, your own feelings...'

  'You know what they are, the interests and the feelings and everything else. What could induce you to change your mind and sign? What made you refuse at the outset?'

  The answer to the first of her questions was easy to formulate but hard to deliver. The true answer to the second was in the same case, but false answers could at least be attempted. With the best show of firmness he could put on, Lyall said, 'The first concern of us all, as ever, is our duty to God. We speak of that as of a simple and obvious thing, and sometimes indeed it is so. But at other times we have to walk with caution and seek for guidance. That guidance may come—'

  'Oh, is that all?'

  He did not need to look at her to feel the weight of her disappointment.

  'You must allow me to know more of these matters than you, my child.'

  'Yes, I suppose I must. One last question, Father. If at the end of this period you were to remain steadfast in your refusal, what then?'

  'Then,' he said, with real firmness this time, 'I should soon be removed from the office which gives import to my refusal, and a more pliant person would be substituted.'

  'My husband would be compelled to dismiss you and to appoint...?'

  'No compulsion would be necessary. Master Anvil is an exceedingly devout Christian, and is known to be one. A word from the right quarter acquainting him with the divine will in this business, and that would be an end of it.'

  She nodded without speaking. After a moment she said in a lifeless tone, 'There must be some right of appeal, to the Archbishop or Convocation.'

  'Right of appeal, well and good, but no surety that an appeal will not be dismissed without even being heard. No substantial grounds for appeal that I can discern in this case. And unsuccessful appellants are not well regarded in our polity.'

  'In other words, you'll do nothing.'

  'If I thought I could be of the least-'

  'Enough.'

  There were tears on Dame Anvil's face as she left the chair and made slowly for the door. Father Lyall barred her way, taking her gently by the upper arms. She lowered her forehead on to his chest.

  'My child,' he said several times. To begin with he said it like a priest, but only to begin with. When she lifted her face in one of her brief timid glances, he kissed her. Her lips shook, then steadied, then responded, then withdrew.

  'But you're... '

  'A sinner,' he said, smoothing her tears away with his fingertips. 'That's nothing so terrible, I promise you. There are plenty of us in this world.'

  Some time later, a voice rose in what sounded like, but was not, a theatrical prelude to a sneeze, followed by what sounded like, but was not, a long cry of grief. 'Blessed Lord Jesus,' said Margaret Anvil without much clarity. 'What happened to me then?'

  Holding her in his arms on the bed, Lyall made an instant deduction, one that called for no great cleverness or insight, merely for some experience of married women of the higher social condition. 'It was love,' he said.

  'Love? But love is what we...'

  He put his mouth on hers. They lay there a few more minutes in the dim light from the lowered gas-lamp. The tower clock struck eleven.

  'Father, something troubles me.'

  'I see no bar to your calling me Matthew now.'

  'Yes, Matthew. Something troubles me.'

  'Don't begin to repent just yet. Have your sin out. It will have lasted such a short time.'

  'It isn't the sin,' she said urgently, pulling away from him. 'God will take care of that. What you think of me is important too.'

  'Of course it is. I think you're beautiful.'

  'Oh, Matthew, do you? But you distract me. What I must say to you is this.'

  For the moment, however, Margaret did not say what she must say, presumably because, in one quick movement, Lyall had thrown the bed-covers aside, altogether exposing her naked form. Her right hand flew to cover her crotch; her left forearm went across her breasts. Without touching her, without stirring, Lyall looked her in the eyes. Her head jerked away, then slowly came back till she could glance down at her own body. Another jerk, another return, this time to Lyall's face and away again. After a minute of this, she was looking straight back at him, eye to eye, and her arms were at her sides.

  'I must make sure you are beautiful, all of you,' said Lyall. 'I may have spoken too lightly, out of nothing more than instinct... Well, if so, it was sound enough. You are entirely beautiful. But your most beautiful part... is here.'

  He reached out and stroked her temple and cheek. She caught his hand, kissed it, and said in a shaky voice, 'Nobody has ever looked at me like that before.'

  'You haven't allowed it?'

  'No, just—nobody has ever looked at me.'

  'I'm glad I was the first.'

  'So am I.'

  After putting back the covers and waiting for a moment, he said, 'Well?'

  'Forgive me?'

  'There was something you must say to me, I thought.'

  'Oh. Oh yes. But it seems of less import now.'
r />   'Since you were distracted from whatever it is by my telling you you were beautiful, you may forget it for ever and not ruffle me.'

  'No. No, I must say. Here it is. Matthew, it may seem to you that all my talk of Hubert and the document was a pretext, and I called on you only to come to your bed.'

  'That is not so.'

  'No, it's not so, but do you believe it's not so?'

  'I believe it.'

  'Swear that you do. Swear by Almighty God.'

  'I so swear,' said the priest, making the Sign of the Cross as he lay naked on his back. Nor was this a false oath: it was a quarter of an hour or more since he had discarded the view he had just denied. 'Now, is that better?'

  'Half better. Only half better, because I must talk to you again of Hubert and the document; I must try again to persuade you to help me. And this may make you believe something different, but still bad. Matthew, I didn't come to your bed to make it harder for you not to be persuaded.'

  Both manners and policy dictated his answer to that. 'No, Margaret, I'm sure you didn't.'

  'Are you? Your voice isn't the same. This time you're thinking. You spoke without thought before. Now, you consider whether you've heard the truth or not. Isn't that so, Matthew?'

  'Yes.' Lyall had indeed been thinking, to the effect that only a bold and devious woman would have ventured to raise openly the point about persuasion, let alone press it, and that Margaret Anvil was not bold and very likely was not devious either.

  'Say, then.'

  'I swear by Almighty God that I truly believe that you came to my bed out of no ulterior motive.'

  She sighed but said nothing.

  'Where's your persuasion?' he asked after a time.

  'Here it is, now that you ask—to begin it at once would have been too vulgar. As Hubert's mother I have a duty to protect him, a duty laid on me by God and nature. But, in this world, what can a woman do? I must have a man by me who will-'

  'You have a man. I'll help you, so far as I'm able. That may not be far, but there's something in the wording of that document which gives room for debate, and two years ago a friend of mine was in the Archbishop's directorate. I must discover if he's still there.'