'Good,' the owl-child said. 'Do you like being thought well of by dons' wives?'
'I'd not thought about it.'
The girl nodded slowly. 'If you do I should keep your hair cut shorter.'
Furlow's daughter had gone. David got to his feet, killing an impulse to look at his watch. Furlow was evidently still unable to withdraw the finger from his ear, and Brougham was caressing the beard of a Pekinese, motivated no doubt by the same prompting that had once caused David to jab at an electric fire with a poker at the Master's sherry party.
'We've seen the real thing, haven't we, Salamon?' David said kindly. 'An embryo intellectual,' he explained, not letting Brougham escape.
'Oh, rather ' Brougham said.
David turned to Furlow. 'Good-bye, sir, thank you.' Furlow raised the hand that wasn't engaged with his ear.
At the gate David was congratulating himself on having escaped without another bout with the Cyclops child, when there was a shuffling behind him, and a hand was placed on his shoulder. The hand felt like the leathery skin of a rice pudding, which might rupture at any moment, revealing formless pulp. It was Ricks.
'There you are, Rogers,' he said unnecessarily. 'It is Rogers, isn't it? Yes, I have got a note on you. I wanted you to know, though, that in all my years at Cecilia's I've never seen such an extraordinary sight as I saw in the quad this morning. Quite astonishing!' The old man was panting after his effort to catch David. 'You know, I suppose those young boys pass through the Great Quad to or from the choir school about six times a day. Quite pretty some of them, probably, though I don't notice children myself. But I've never before seen an undergraduate talk to one. Are you a homosexual?'
Ricks had once asked a freshman, 'Young man, are you a virgin?', to which the man was alleged to have replied, 'In front, or behind, sir?' David merely shook his head; foregoing any pretence at wit. He recalled the picture of Ricks coming into the Schools to lecture and stripping off his trousers in an attempt to clear the hall of women.
David lit a cigarette for Ricks, and said good-bye; turning a moment later to watch him shuffling away down the strict perspective of Charlbury Road. He turned himself to the way he had come, and walked through the scarcely opened blossoms of Belbroughton which a light wind scattered at his feet.
Half an hour later David stepped out of the back gate of St. Cecilia's, where he had returned to collect accumulated post. It was only half past five and the sun was still hot, washing the buildings a deep gold. He sat on the terrace, looking out over the Great Park where it stretched towards the river. The grass was already browned in patches beneath the trees, and it was covered with a hum of insects.
His post was the usual assortment of religious society cards which had continued to follow his soul since a rash resolution of togetherness had caused him to sign it away to all sects in the freshman's panic of his first term.
He struck out wildly with a rather ostentatious card, but missed the hornet that seemed to be circling his head. Stiffening, he looked up to where, a long way away, a .75 cc. Frog engine must be making angry orbits between earth and sky.
David smiled faintly at the thought of having made some sort of contribution to the gigantic foundation of which he was a member, and turned his face towards his digs in Walton Street.
Chapter 4
David had taken his digs for a year with the option of a second; a settlement which no doubt reflected his bourgeois predisposition for artificial security. He had been able to decorate it himself, borrowing a steel-grey carpet from his home, washing the walls with a pink emulsion, and painting the woodwork in a grey that matched the cerebral cortex, and so might be expected to delude it into anaesthesia. A small upright piano he had been able to import by the simple expedient of sawing off its legs on the pavement below and then sticking them on again with Bostick reinforced with six-inch nails. Otherwise the room was simply furnished, and ordered meticulously with further regard for the cerebral cortex. David had all the bourgeois' obsessional urge to hide unseemliness in drawers, and so apart from some boxes on top of the wardrobe which contained photographic equipment, the only other visible object was a large photo of the Creek horses on St. Mark's in Venice, which he had stuck directly to the wall after consultation of a neighbouring scientist's slide rule.
David had entered the house with half-closed eyes as was his habit. The tenement was not a slum but its neighbours were. The pale yellow brick was as much like a public lavatory as the rest of the row, but the frontage had been painted with undergraduate rents, and stood out a glaring canary among the grimed blacks and greens like Virgil's mysterious fruit in the primeval forest. Its tenant hierarchy, reading towards the sky, though without implying divine allotment, consisted of a barber in the basement, who could sometimes be seen abusing his wife, Mrs. Kanter, who owned the building, a Balliol scientist who had breakfast, and David himself who did not. The Balliol man's rooms carried a clause which made him responsible for sweeping the stairs.
David collapsed into his desk-chair, opened the typewriter, and wound on a sheet of foolscap. He was too tired to reach any of the relevant books off the shelf above him. Gloss, then. He flicked the ribbon indicator to red to brighten the overall effect, and like Crawley biting the bus seat, sank his teeth meditatively into the key casing where the word Remington had long since been licked away. He hit the paragraph release to jar his teeth, and then hit it again. The mechanism crossed the Page in bold jumps, but no inspiration came even when the bell pinged. He got up to look at the St. Mark's horses, circled the room, running his finger over the rack of L.P. records, and then hurled himself into his chair again from a yard's distance. He began to hit the keys: pummelling at each meaningless symbol. Then he reduced the keyboard pattern of his first line to a single horizontal plane, opened the piano, and struck the series of chords it represented. Appalled, he stumbled back to the desk for the third time, and began to peel off a sallow, summer night essay for his Lit. tutor.
Perhaps an hour later David played a passage of Mozart on the typewriter. The keys flew into the sacred circle; inextricably jammed cheek to cheek. It was rather like the Oxford girl race. Improving on the new game, he half depressed the letter G, suspending the slender finger in space. With his other hand he beat down three letters simultaneously. T got there first, bruising the wretched G intolerably so that she let out a metallic whine. Probably a black man called Tosca and a St. Hilda's girl with a head full of adolescent socialism and racial tears.
David beat out a line of Xs to represent a gap he might fill later. Why didn't he have his paper produced in rolls and perforated like bumf? He'd once produced essays for a whole term at a single sitting, and might tonight stray through Swift. Pope and Johnson without pause.
After a further hour David reached into his pocket for a cigarette, panicked, thumbed through the stubs of his cheque book, and hit the keys with renewed fury, without making so much as an inter-space.
Dear Sir,
I have just received your invoice for work carried out on my Series 4 in March, and should like to raise two points.
My initial letter with regard to the paint-work sounded your responsibility with considerable restraint. I did however enquire whether any, and what, cost might be incurred by myself. At no reference was made either in your reply, or when I saw the Managing Director at the Works, I assumed that this matter would be attended to under the obtaining warranty. I was, too, prepared to accept an unexplained fault in good faith.
The second point relates to the labour charge for what amounted to a routine adjustment and lubrication service.
I have read the handbook clause explaining Works' charges as 'consistent with expert workmanship', expected, and I hope got just this. However your labour quotation of £7-10-0 represents some 15 man/hours, or 2 astonishingly intensive man/days. Could there have been some clerical error?
It is not my habit to query bills. As I hope to be able to avail myself of your Works' facilities in future I should
be grateful far same explanation of this.
Yours Faithfully, D. Rogers.
David rose from his desk and, opening the wardrobe for a fresh packet of cigarettes, his eye fell on the level of the whisky. Aloud he said. 'My total capital is three hundred pounds. I'm damned if I'm going to spend it.' He returned to the desk.
To the Insurance Company
Dear Sir,
With regard to the delay of payment for the receipted bills now in your possession I have only one thing to say. As you already know, my car was stationary at traffic lights, and had been stationary for some minutes, when the car of Mrs. Shepherd collided with its rear. Only my concern for Mrs. Shepherd's obviously hysterical state prevented my summoning the police in order to prefer a charge of dangerous driving.
As I see it, therefore, your liability is established beyond all doubt.
If, however, Mrs. Shepherd is prepared to sustain the costs of an action at law simply for the privilege of presenting your company with a mistaken account of the accident well and good. Meanwhile I suggest you impress upon your client the advisability of supplying you with factual information, such as may enable you to honour my receipts with cash payment within the next forty-eight hours.
I remain, Sir.
Yours Faithfully, D .Rogers.
Suddenly weary. David opened his wardrobe and drank the last of the whisky It was 2 a. m. He tore off his clothes, folded them, stood back contemplating them for a minute, and then crept down the undusted stairs to see if the Balliol atom man had left any milk outside his door. He hadn't. Two cats broke off their copulation on the landing. They stared at him shocked, their faces masks of terror, then scampered away. The house was quite still.
Chapter 5
David woke at eleven o'clock. Without bothering to brew himself a cup of Nescafe, he cut out the paragraphs of the essay he had written the night before and glued them together with any other relevant scraps of typescript he could find, to a roll of paper he kept for the purpose. His Lit. tutorial was at three.
Around midday he wandered down to Joe Lyons at Carfax with his scroll under his arm, pausing to deliver a reprimand to a small girl playing in the gutters of Walton Street, who had poked her tongue out at him.
There was already a crowd in the shop. David trundled his tray along the formica shelf, giving plenty of room to a blind man in front of him. There were metal studs on the surface of the shelf, and the blind man's tray bumped over them slopping soup. David watched him ask for the beef. The second girl behind the counter poured a ladle of gravy over the meat; then, seeing that the man was blind, checked his tray with a wet finger and gave him another ladle. The meat nearly floated off the plate.
David took his sandwich and glass of Russian tea to a corner table. He apologised to a woman for treading on her red toe-nail, and glowered at her child which was brushing ice-cream on to the underside of its chin like shaving lather. There was a man on a step-ladder attending to the fans which had broken down. The eaters had glazed eyes and the room was full of smoke: sharply defined steel-blue coils of virgin smoke that rose from forgotten butt-ends; and formless mazes of yellow smoke etiolated by lungs. David broke through the sticky glass doors into the sunshine.
He walked down to St. Cecilia's, determined to be by himself in the Great Park until it was time for his tutorial. At a quarter to three he was looking at his watch when he heard the sound of the Frog again. This time it didn't startle him, and he realised he had half expected it. He went into the back lodge of the college, scribbled a note about stomach upset, childish and inexplicable vomiting, and thrust it together with his essay into the messenger box. Then he walked towards the river and the direction of the high-pitched sound.
He reached the low iron railings of the choir school playing field and paused for a moment. The boy hadn't seen him. He was quite alone in the middle of the field, holding the control handle of the 'plane, and leaning backwards against the centrifugal force as it circled above his head. Then he must suddenly have caught sight of David, because he raised his free hand, brought the 'plane into a bumpy landing, and came towards him over the grass. David noticed that he was no longer wearing the grey flannel suit, but light grey cotton shorts and a blue blazer with a device derived from the college arms on the breast. He had a silver wire across his front teeth, though David couldn't conceive why. As he came up the boy removed the plate and dropped it in the pocket of his blazer.
'Well, it works!'
'I know,' David said. 'I heard it last night.'
'What's your name, by the way?' The boy had raised one foot on to the bottom rail of the fence. He was still wearing the black shoes.
'David. David Rogers.'
'Shall I call you David, or Mr. Rogers?'
David laughed. 'David, I should think. I thought you must be Alessandro Scarlatti, because I saw the A.S. on the bottom of your shoes yesterday. Are you?'
The boy smiled quickly, and his upper teeth showed to the gum. 'No; I'm Antony Sandel. Actually, I was christened Antony, but I'm called Tony. My aunt calls me Ant, though because "you're just like one, boy!" ' he added in evident parody. For an instant his gum showed again. 'Do you want to come and see the 'plane?'
David climbed over the fence, and they walked out into the field. The 'plane was a scale model of a Tempest, and beautifully made.
'The tyres blow up.' said Tony,
'Did you build it yourself?'
'Yes. I usually make one every term. My aunt, that's my good aunt, gets me kits.'
'Do you live with your aunt?' David asked; then regretted the impertinence.
'My parents arc dead. We haven't got much money, and that's why I'm here really. You see, we get paid. That is, a sort of scholarship. For singing, I mean.'
'I'm very sorry.' David said. 'About your parents, I mean.' The boy's diction seemed to be infectious. 'What about the bad aunt?'
'Oh, that's my uncle and aunt. They're all right really. I think they've got too much money though. But they take me skiing sometimes; and on their yacht in summer — as you've probably noticed,' he added philosophically, if inexplicably.
'Noticed?'
'Yes. My legs.' The boy pushed his sock down and pulled the leg of his slants up to his groin. The contour of his muscle was very faint: like the ridge of a sand bar under the golden skin. He had clearly forgotten about the 'plane.
'How old are you. Tony?' David tried to make the question sound like a non-sequitur. He was alarmed.
'Thirteen. I should be going on to Glenelgin next term, but they want me to stay on here.' He moved his head towards the distant spire of St. Cecilia's Temple, though without taking his eyes off David. 'I wouldn't mind so much if conditions weren't so incredibly bad.'
'How do you mean?'
The food. Lloyd, he's a boy in my form, was sick five times last term.'
David smiled. 'That's probably just your age. I had hundreds of tummy upsets at my prep school.' The thought crossed his mind that his tutor was probably reading his note at that very moment.
'I don't think so, the boy said seriously. 'Take Hartley yesterday and the fried bread. It was the fried bread, I'm sure. No, the food is bad,' he repeated, moving the rudder of the 'plane back and forth for emphasis with his toe. 'Sanders was going to organise a strike last term and refuse to sing. But his voice began to break, then he got hair, so it wouldn't have made any difference if he had come out on strike.' The boy gave the 'plane another poke with his toe. 'I hope I don't get hair.'
Wildly, David wondered whether the child was contemplating some traumatic connection between this 'hair' and his voice, or whether he was thinking about the beauty of his body again. He didn't need to wonder for long.
'I mean it spoils it, doesn't it — your tummy, Look. The line should be smooth like this.' He had turned his body away from David so that it showed a profile, and impatiently restraining the jutting creases of his shorts with one hand, he inscribed a slow curve in the air with the other close to the front of hi
s stomach, making a cup-like indentation at the bottom of the stroke. 'You see?' He looked up smiling, and gestured towards the Temple again with his head. There's a statue in the chapel which is smooth like that. It's much nicer than Sanders.'
'Tell me about Sanders, and about the choir school,' David said. He was beginning to feel responsibility for this extraordinary child.
'Well, Sanders has left actually. The school's not too bad. We've got one decent master called Mr. Simon, who's got a lot of artbooks, but he's got to leave at the end of this term. He seduced someone, I'm afraid.'
'I see. You'll miss the statues in the art books?'
'Yes. I like statues. And paintings, too, really. But statues more. The matrons are decent but I don't like the Ghoul. In fact, I rather hate the Ghoul. He used to call me his choirboy. It's rather wearisome being a joke.'
'I don't understand.'
'Oh, you know ...'
David was surprised that the boy seemed to have few inhibitions about mysteries; though probably it was only because they still were mysteries. He found he had dug his heel deeply into the hard ground. 'I don't think you're a joke, Tony.'
The boy was lost in some world of his own; moving his feet idly in the grass, which was very brown in the middle of the field. He nodded towards the Temple for the third time that afternoon. 'I'll have to be clocking in over there soon. Back to school, change into best suit, left-right crocodile, and then all those vestments! At least we don't have to wear lipstick like I did in Vienna.'
'Have you been to Vienna?'
'Mmm,' the boy nodded. 'Last summer I did an exchange with a boy from the Vienna Boys' Choir — a boy from Kings and one from the Chapel Royal went too. But they wear lipstick for concerts.'
'That's why you were so quick with my German yesterday then!'
'Yes. I only know some libretto, though. Oh, and how to point out particular cream cakes.'
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