A Disturbing Influence

by Julian Mitchell

  They reached the island one by one, grounding a few yards out, then standing up and wading to the shore. The last one to arrive was the one who had wanted to wear a bathing suit. As he joined the others he said: ‘I’m not much of a swimmer, I’m afraid.’ The six of them dripped moonlight on the small shingle beach.

  ‘You don’t have to worry about that,’ said Dick Thomson. He was tall and strong, the son of the farmer at Mendleton, and he stretched himself luxuriously as he spoke, then shook himself like a dog and said: ‘Let’s have a drink and get warm, David.’

  A narrow path led from the beach. It had the air of recent improvisation, and could not be seen from the edge of the lake. After about fifty yards David stopped in a small clearing. Someone had obviously taken care to remove all brambles and undergrowth, for they were piled up at one side of the clearing.

  David produced some towels and rugs from behind a tree-stump,and gave them each orders about what to do with the things they had carried over. These were mostly bottles. The moon filtered through the branches of the trees, young ashes, with a few willows and hazels. A moorhen scuttled abruptly across the clearing, making them all start.

  When they were dry, and the rugs were spread, they lay or sat down, drinking from a bottle of whisky in turn.

  ‘That’s better,’ said Dick Thomson. ‘Eh, Allen? Still want your bathing costume?’

  The others laughed and began to talk in low voices, though soon they made no effort to be quiet. They felt beyond the reach of law and order, of Brigadier Hobson, of Cartersfield.

  ‘A man needs a drink occasionally,’ said David, opening another bottle.

  ‘God, you must be rich,’ said Allen Bradshaw. He wasn’t used to whisky.

  ‘Yes,’ said David. A ghostly amusement flickered across his thin face, the hollows of his eyes accentuated by the filtered moonlight. ‘It has its compensations when one’s in exile.’

  ‘Exile?’ said Jack Tarrant, Betty’s brother. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘I was sent to Cartersfield to recuperate from a long and serious illness,’ said David, gravely watching the faces round him. ‘To me it is a sort of sanatorium, and if you’d ever been in any sanatorium you’d know how boring life can be.’

  ‘Cartersfield’s a dull hole, all right,’ said Dennis Palmer. He laughed rather loudly. ‘God, I’d give anything to get out.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind seeing a bit of the world,’ said Allen.

  ‘You’ve been in the Army,’ said Jack, ‘you’ve seen the world. Don’t you read the advertisements? Join the Army and see the world.’

  ‘Fat lot of it I saw,’ said Allen. ‘Never even got as far as Wales. Spent all my time repairing tanks.’

  ‘This is good stuff,’ said Dick Thomson, irrelevantly. ‘It gives you a real thick head in the morning, though, Allen. You’d better watch it.’

  ‘I feel fine. I can look after myself.’

  ‘It’s a man’s drink,’ said David. ‘A man’s drink in a woman’s country.’ He tilted the bottle and drank.

  ‘What’ve you got against women?’ said Allen.

  ‘Nothing,’ said David. ‘Nothing at all. They have a purpose and they gloriously fulfil it.’

  They all laughed, Jack Tarrant loudest of all. His voice had a musical lilt to it, and as he laughed he seemed to be practising scales.

  ‘There’s no need to tell the whole neighbourhood about it,’ said Dennis.

  The quiet one, who seemed to be called only Jim, and said he came from Chancelford, smiled and said: ‘Pass the bottle.’ He raised his eyebrow at David in some private question. David shook his head, unnoticed by the others.

  David began to talk quietly about abroad, about the desert in Libya and the great plains of Texas, about aridity and the sun as an enemy, till they could almost feel the parching dust-choked spaces, the inimical deadly eye above, and nothing but stunted shrubs and cacti to mar the sweep of multi-coloured sand, muddling Libya and Texas with the films they had seen of the American West and the biblical epics they vaguely associated with Arabia, the muddle becoming more confused with the high thin air of South American mountains, Venezuela scarcely more than a fabulous name to them, with Borneo and the tropical forest like an untamed animal for ever at the door, David talking with a fierce longing that disguised the actual softness of his voice, a longing not for a particular place, but for the exotic, the elemental. He seemed to find some private pleasure in contemplating the absolute humiliation of man before empty spaces and the dank seething vegetable tropics and the sheer airless cliffs of the Andes, as though only in the extreme condition could he find satisfaction, as though he needed the constant battle with the elements, with forces he knew he could never conquer but which must conquer him, as though he needed them to live. And in telling of these things the excitement of their challenge entered each youth, sprawled out beneath the filtered English moon, and they yearned with him for that elemental struggle which couldn’t be won, but against which he could strip and fight with the intense dedication to survival of a gladiator in some Roman arena, where life depended on himself alone, on his own dexterous evasion of mortality, till it finally failed him, he never surrendering, refusing to be beaten even at the end with the knife at his throat, never crying out for mercy, for charity, for love, taking death as inevitable and hating it even as he embraced it, but never yielding it an inch, never its prisoner, never taken alive, not ceasing to fight till every nerve and cell was cut down and quartered.

  They passed the bottle round as he talked, their eyes reflecting the strange images he gave them, thrust on them with his fierce longing, listening as he described the blank useless desert and the blank useless mountains as forces with wills stronger than men’s, as intractably beautiful adversaries, as passionate devouring lovers, fighting with him through jungle and across scrub and sand and up screes, sharing his blind but absolute determination not to give in, not to surrender, to fight while falling over thousand-foot cliffs, while inextricably lost and tangled in the clinging shoots of the jungle, while thirst-crazed in the desert, refusing ever to take a compass or a water-bottle or an ice-axe, setting out alone and unarmed against the elements.

  When he stopped, he reached for the bottle and drank, as though he had indeed been wandering in some desert, watched by them in silence. The moon splattered through the branches on the six young bodies, motionless and dreaming.

  ‘I’d like to go to those places,’ said Allen softly, his mind far from his strange nakedness on an island near his native town. He drank, hardly tasting the liquor.

  They all stirred, like sleepers disturbed by a distant noise, not loud enough to wake them.

  ‘God, I’d like to get out there,’ he said, still absorbed in himself and the images in his head, unaware almost of the others. ‘That must be a wonderful place you were talking about, David.’ He was still too entranced to separate the places, thinking of them as one, as David had described them in his fierce longing, giving them all a single condition of being.

  There was silence. Then Dennis said: ‘I’m cold. Let’s light a fire.’

  ‘Won’t it be seen?’ said Jack Tarrant.

  ‘Not if we keep it small,’ said David.

  They gathered wood and brushwood for kindling from the pile at the side of the clearing. As David lit the fire, he said: ‘Now don’t get too close to it or you’ll feel cold when it dies down. Keep away from it.’

  They did what they were told. The sight of flames was enough to warm them as the desert sun faded from their minds. The fire burned briskly for a few minutes, then settled to a quiet demolition of the logs, a steady smouldering, a red eye in the darkness. When it was quiet their eyes grew used to the moonlight again. David opened yet another bottle, and they drank. Allen and Jack were becoming rather drunk. Jim raised an eyebrow and this time David nodded almost absently, not making any further move.

  Jim said something to Jack, who giggled. Dennis and Dick Thomson looked at each other uncomfortabl
y. Allen noticed nothing, lost in whisky and the bright images of foreign lands. After a minute or two Jim and Jack slipped quietly away into the undergrowth, melting quickly into the blackness of the island. Again Allen noticed nothing.

  After a while he was conscious of someone’s arm round his shoulder, and he sat up. The arm was David’s. ‘Where did those two go?’ he said, bewildered.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said David. ‘Shall we go and look?’

  ‘All right,’ said Allen. His feet were unsteady, he found, and he felt rather sick, but David helped him up and supported him, the arm now round his waist. They went in the opposite direction from Jim and Jack.

  Left with the bottle, Dick Thomson said: ‘I don’t know. It’s all right, I suppose, if you like it, but it’s not …’ He left the sentence to the bland moon, filtering still through the branches.

  ‘It’s not a very painful way of getting a night’s drinking, is it?’ said Dennis. He lay back on the rug.

  ‘No. All the same——’

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ said Dennis. ‘Relax and enjoy yourself.’ He followed his own advice, the bottle passing steadily between them. Then he said: ‘That Jim’s an odd bird, isn’t he?’

  ‘He’s the one started it, if you ask me. David’s a good bloke.’

  ‘Doesn’t stop him doing it, though.’

  The bottle passed.

  ‘God! This is a fine way to spend an evening!’ said Dick Thomson, in a thoroughly satisfied voice.

  ‘Did he make you do that the first time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Were you the first?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Dennis. ‘There was just the three of us the first time. Then you came, and we swam that old hut out to the island. I thought I’d die laughing. Christ, we were all pissed as newts.’

  ‘I’ll say. I don’t hardly remember what happened.’

  ‘Well,’ said Dennis, ‘you don’t remember much the first time.’

  They were silent for a while, then Dennis said: ‘Give the fire a poke, Dick.’

  He went over to the fire and pushed at a log with his toe, sending a bright stream of sparks into the air.

  ‘What do you reckon we’ll do tonight, Dennis?’

  ‘Smash something. We’ll have to get a bit more pissed first. Give us the bottle.’

  ‘Come and get it.’

  ‘Come on, hand it over.’

  ‘I want to smash something,’ said Dick Thomson.

  ‘I’ll smash you,’ said the other, suddenly angry. He leaned over to grab the bottle, but Dick foiled him, snatching it away out of reach. They began to grapple, playfully at first, then earnestly, fighting for the pleasure of fighting. The bottle was knocked over, spilling whisky into the dry ground. The moonlight spattered on their twisting bodies.

  David watched them from the shadow of the edge of the clearing. There was no expression on his face at all, no mockery or indolence, just a smooth white blankness with the sharp jut of his nose and the invisibly dark eyes watching the two men wrestling back and forth. Allen leaned against him in a bewildered drunken dream, supported by David’s arm, his eyes recording only an astonished innocence, as though it had been left there to dry like a photographic negative.

  *

  A mile away Brigadier Hobson dozed over his twelve-bore. He shook himself awake, and thought, Evangeline will have a fit. He looked at his watch. Just about midnight.

  I’ll give it another half-hour, he thought.

  His back ached. He sneezed.

  *

  ‘It’s a man’s world,’ said David, ‘if you make it that way.’

  It was late, the last bottle was empty, they were ready to go.

  ‘Shall I do something about the fire?’ said Dennis.

  ‘Oh, leave it.’

  They took the narrow path back to the shingle beach, Allen carried in David’s arms, either asleep or passed out.

  ‘How are we going to get him back?’ said Dick.

  ‘Leave that to me,’ said David. ‘Let’s go.’

  They waded out into the water, still warm and glittering with the moon, still bright, though sinking now, still probing at the white bodies moving steadily just below the surface. Allen drifted without movement, apparently, on his back, in the wake of David’s head, still asleep, perhaps, though his eyes were open, staring at the faint but definite stars, his limbs without any sign of life, trailing after him like tendrils.

  *

  Later, after Brigadier Hobson had gone home, trying to warm himself with the certainty that no outrage had been committed that night, anyway, after the six men had landed and dressed, the gate had been opened and closed, the car had gone, the large island in the middle of the lake began to glow. Soon it was ablaze, the heat-wave having dried it out, prepared it for fire. As the flames mounted they seemed pale and phantom-like, for dawn was already bright in the eastern sky, and the reflected fire in the water became lost in the new day. The flames became invisible as the sun shone on them, and after an hour the only sign that fire had raged and was burning still was a thin drift of smoke, and winter-black branches against another cloudless sky. The island looked as though it had been curiously left out of the normal rhythm of the seasons, and kept still a January caution amid the lush profusion of June.

  7

  IT WAS a pleasant surprise to see David at breakfast. He had been out seeing his friends the Donaldsons again the night before—he spent a good deal of time over at Chancelford—and he found breakfast too early for him most mornings. But when I got back from Holy Communion he was reading the Sunday Times in the dining-room.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you gave me quite a shock, David. We’re not used to seeing him at this uncivilized hour, are we, Mrs Crawley?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean by uncivilized, Mr Henderson,’ she said, ‘I’m always up by seven.’

  David smiled and said: ‘Good morning, Raymond. Did you have a nice service?’

  I had painfully accustomed myself to his total ignorance of things religious, so I contented myself with saying: ‘Services are neither nice nor nasty, David. They are services.’

  ‘I was thinking, Raymond, that perhaps you’re right, one should go to church to see if one can’t find something in it.’ I winced, but he went on: ‘I thought I’d come to Morning whatever-you-call-it today, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘I should be delighted, of course,’ I said, and I was, I really was. He was a very baffling young man in some ways, incomprehensible at times, and he could shock me very easily with some of his ideas. But then he could be very charming and thoughtful, too. It was just that I sometimes felt I wasn’t making contact with him at all.

  ‘And by the way,’ I said, ‘you may as well call it Matins.’

  ‘Matins. I see. Matins.’

  Mrs Crawley brought in scrambled eggs and bacon. She was very fond of him, I think, and had taken my instructions to fatten him up almost too literally. There were always quantities of food going back to the kitchen. And however much he ate, he remained exactly the same weight, to Mrs Crawley’s dismay.

  ‘I have been thinking, Raymond, that I ought to go home soon. I’ve been here more than a month, and I can’t tell you how much better I feel for it. But I can’t impose on you for ever.’

  ‘Oh, don’t say that. I’m glad you feel the country’s done you some good, but there’s no need to feel you have to go. It’s a real pleasure to have you, David. It’s been very lonely here since Isobel—since your aunt died.’

  I hadn’t seen very much of him, to tell the truth, and he was always out somewhere, but he had made the house seem more lived-in. He could be very disconcerting, and I don’t know how much he was responsible for the sudden moments of doubt that afflicted me that summer—he may well have started me on that soul-searching which is still going on—but however baffling he could be, I had enjoyed having someone to talk to occasionally. Of course, he hadn’t been properly educated, and he didn’t
have the background of an ordinary English young man, and I had to make allowances.

  ‘No,’ he said, having made up his mind in advance, it seemed, ‘I came here to convalesce, Raymond, and I’m really very much better. Convalescence makes me very restless. I’d like to live a little now.’

  That was typical of him, he would say something very pleasant, and then undercut it with a remark that made me feel he could not have been sincere. He was really rather a difficult person to understand, after a lifetime of Cartersfield. But I was sure he meant well, and was simply telling the truth. There was little enough for a young man to do in Cartersfield, and after he’d pulled a muscle in his back he couldn’t even play tennis with Jane Gilchrist, though it didn’t seem to stop him swimming. And I knew what he meant about convalescence. It’s like wanting to scratch a scar—the scar itches because it’s healing, I believe. It’s a sign one is really getting well. So I made no very great effort to stop him going.

  ‘When are you thinking of leaving?’

  ‘I really don’t know. Tomorrow, perhaps. I’ll ring Mildred tonight and see what’s going on.’

  It seemed a little sudden, but I said ‘Good idea’ and we left it at that.

  We walked together to church as the bell began to ring, and he was courtesy itself, inquiring about who was in the choir, and showing an interest in Cartersfield, now that he was leaving, that he had never shown before. The young these days are really rather mysterious to a man of my age, without children of my own, and they all seem to do things the wrong way round. But, like David, they are polite, even if they don’t seem to make very good sense.

  It was quite a good congregation, reduced as always by fine weather, though there were one or two absentees. Allen Bradshaw wasn’t there, for one. He almost always came, not, alas, so much to pray as to wait for his girl friend, Ruth Stevens, who was in the choir. And then Dick Thomson was missing among the basses. But he wasn’t very reliable, and I suspect he enjoyed his Saturday evenings more than his Sunday mornings. Most notably absent was Brigadier Hobson, who usually read the second lesson, while James Gilchrist read the first. Evangeline Hobson was there, though, and I spoke to her before the service began. She whispered something about explaining to me afterwards, so I asked Gilchrist to read the second lesson, too, which he seemed delighted to do. He read very well, if rather sententiously, but in a good loud voice that made people listen.