Sandel

by Angus Stewart

  'Thank you,' Tony said. He met David's eyes so seriously that he jerked forward impulsively and began dusting the elm seeds out of his hair.

  'Brush one hundred times forwards and one hundred times backwards,' Tony said happily beneath the buffeting.

  They had reached the Botanical Garden, and the boy had retrieved his cap and 'plane from the boot. 'When can I see you again?' he asked blankly.

  David span one of the 'plane's wheels on its hub. It was true that the tyres were inflatable. 'I don't know, Tony. How long do verrucas last?'

  'All term,' the boy said without hesitation.

  'What about Saturday?'

  'Shall I be in the same place?'

  David nodded. He straightened the boy's cap. 'Better bring the plane, Tony. Go straight back now.'

  David crossed the barber's bridge, and climbed the stairs with his eyes open. He corrected the angles of chairs misplaced by Mrs. Kanter's domestic industry, and then sat down at his typewriter. Ten minutes later he wound out a sheet of quarto and locked it over.

  TROPICAL FISH

  Tropical fish

  Are a delectable dish

  Much favoured in the Orient.

  But to Ant

  They simply can't

  Be anything but orn(i)ament.

  These rare marine fauna

  Then, normally orna‑

  Ment the tables of Chinamen.

  But to Ony Tony

  (When proved Bona

  Fide) they're stock for his aquarium.

  To you or me a fish

  Is a fish

  Whether gold, or tropical. or merely cod.

  But to Ant

  They're sacrosant

  And certainly not food.

  David sealed the rhyme in an envelope and posted it.

  Chapter 8

  There was no row of Jesuits perched on Bruce Lang's bed. Having established this with a peep David opened the door fully, nearly upsetting a table on which the works of Thomas Mann were disposed in the unmistakable confusion of crib books. Though he was now eight months on the road to Rome, Lang still had his digs in the attics of the retired canon of Bath, who was St. Cecilia's Dean of Divinity, and high functionary in the Temple. The situation, Lang would tell you, was comfortable since the canon was never loaded.

  David entered the room, taking care not to look at the colour photo of the Pope above the mantelpiece. His Holiness held a small bird. Facing him, on the opposite wall, was a more modest representation of Lang as the Christ in the Chester Mystery Cycle they had once performed at school. The east wall was bare save for a two-foot crucifix, complete with contorted Saviour. David touched his forelock.

  'Gruss Gott, Gott!'

  'David, that man died for you,' Lang roared.

  'Yes, Bruce; I know.'

  'You don't consider there's a certain impertinence in commending God's attendance upon God?'

  David looked at the effigy again. It reminded him of the family guest house at St. Jacut in Brittany which was run by nuns. They all carried two-foot models, and when they waited at table the feet of the Redeemer clanked against soup tureens. 'I was thinking of L'Abbaye.'

  'Oh,' said Lang flatly. He got up and poured David a glass of port, although it was only five o'clock. He had put down the porcelain bowl he had been turning in his fingers, and David picked it up. It was a finely wrought vessel of egg-shell thinness with narrow, fluted channels which spiralled up from its base to the crenellated lip. It had once been a cup, whose cleanly broken handle had been disguised by a cleverly faked continuation of the pattern, so that it was now a bowl. But the colour did not quite match, and the brilliant jay's-wing blue of the original glaze had proved inimitable.

  'When do you think it was restored?'

  Lang had sat down in the brown corduroy chair again. 'Probably quite soon after it was made, though as you can see it was too late. It must have been properly glazed and baked again. It's early Crown Derby: sometime in the last quarter of the eighteenth century I should think.'

  'Was it so highly valued in those days that someone should have taken the trouble to restore it even then? After all, it's only a tea-cup.'

  'Probably. That blue under-glaze was a trade secret of the pottery at Derby, and withheld even from the London branch. The gilding's perfect, but whoever did it couldn't manage the blue. It's possible that the thing was restored at the London pottery at Bow.'

  David replaced the hybrid on the table and sighed. 'I expect I'll come over in the end, Bruce!'

  'Whore'

  'To the Scarlet Lady - under the incense - you know.'

  Lang laughed.

  'It must be wonderful to have your way carved out for you,' David went on, running his finger up one of the grooves on the bowl. 'To have a pathway ready hewed through the mountains, and follow it happily masticating in your nosebag - blinkers on the trail. And all the awesome pomp. The sweet-smelly smoke, and those nose-picking plebeian acolytes toddling round with watering-cans tinkling little bells. Then the doctrine of happy accommodation - flexible as any bulrush when the emotional gales of March are blowing. Ah, blessed idiosyncratic interpretation!' David felt rubber bands behind his ears involuntarily spring the corners of his mouth He restrained the childish triumph badly.

  Lang was looking down the several yards of his legs, and had one eye closed. 'You remember then?'

  'Father!' David mimicked with confessional solemnity. In March last year, after seeing an Italian film at the Scala, which was on the Index too, I swore tearfully to my heathen friend Rogers that Resurrection of the Body must take place at fourteen years of age exactly, for otherwise it were pointless. These were my very words, Father. What must I do now?' David dropped his voice an octave, and answered himself, 'Repeat four hundred Hail Marys, my son.'

  Log had raised the heavy cushion behind his head to the full extension of his arms. Now he hurled it with a grunt. The cushion missed Dodd, upsetting the table, and completing the disorientation of Mann. David got up and tossed it back. 'Isn't this stuff on the Index, anyway?' He was restacking Joseph and his Brothers, Felix Krull, and Death in Venice. Lang had settled back, and was looking tiredly at David. 'Mann was deeply religious, and probably one of the greatest thinkers of the century.' He seemed to be putting little wings on his words.

  'Whole shelf, a bit unorthodox I would have thought. For a good Roman. What about this lot?' David ran his hand over the spines of Gide, Sartre and Proust. He stopped before

  twin volumes of Peyrefitte in French. Les Amities Particulieres and Les Clefs de St. Pierre. 'Omigod!' he murmured, pulling out the last, and looking at Lang in horror. 'Oh, Bruce! There must be a Papal Bull already in the post. You must hide, man!

  Lang was making motions with the cushion again, but changed his mind. Instead, he said, 'If you had only read the elementary bases of your own school, Milton's Aereopagitica

  for instance, you'd know that ever since good and evil came into the world "as two twins cleaving together" man's sole preoccupation has been with their distinction. He must learn, if I remember rightly, to ''apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish". That way he becomes the "true war-faring Christian" … '

  'Sure, sure.' David murmured. 'Milton was worried about something else, you know. Rome, my boy! The "wolf with privy paw". The implementers of the Inquisition - who'd gaoled Galileo, and broken Da Vinci's toy helicopter.' David pointed at the bed where the Jesuits were accustomed to sit. 'Who knew that you mightn't pervert geography next, or suppress the humanity of Greece - to whose "polite wisdom" we owe it, after all, that "we are not yet Goths and Jutlanders"! Mind you,' David added, 'Milton wrote before the invention of Anglo-Saxon in the nineteenth century. We are now Goths and Jutlanders, though through no fault of yours this time'

  'Thank you,' said Lang. 'Incidentally, Milton studied Anglo-Saxon, though he probably knew even leas than you.'

  David was incredulous. 'Really?'

&nbs
p; There was a fixed smile on Lang's face. David thought he was growing to resemble the Spanish Jesuit.

  'I stick to my point,' Lang said. 'We must read all; and be responsible.'

  'Rome's umbrella!' David muttered. 'The aura of mystery and entertainment that draws Europe's masses more surely than telly. Of course, most of them don't have telly - or coats when it rains. When you've no money for the cafes, there's always the incense house on the corner!'

  'You're being very silly, David!' Lang was suddenly angry.

  'Probably. But I don't like this fascist stuff. "We the elect have a duty to the masses: we know." '

  'Intellectual superiority need not contradict humbleness,' Lang said gently. 'You know I'm arrogant, David, but that's beside the point here.' It was like Lang to use any weapon, and he knew David was too weak to attack sentiment.

  David took on port. 'You bamboozle me with doctrinal manoeuvre. Would you rather we talk in Italian; or Perhaps Spanish?'

  'I speak neither, as you well know.' Lang had slipped down into the chair, and his long body jutted out of it like a breakwater.

  'By the way,' David went on, 'talking of raincoats and responsibility, do you still maintain that it's equally worthy to drop half a crown down a well in dedication to God as to spend it on clothing for refugees? It's another of the convert, dictums I've got a note of.'

  Lang didn't answer. He hoisted himself from the chair and sloped over to the bookcase. He took down a volume and turned back to David. 'I've modified my diagnosis of your mind,' he said. 'May I read to you?'

  'Please!'

  'Very well then. Leslie Stephen on that remarkable man Sir Thomas Browne - probably not the least of the studies you've neglected.'

  'Good God! Don't tell me the Medical School still reads the Religio Medici?'

  'We don't, I do, and shut up,' said Lang carefully. He began to read.

  ' "Sir Thomas's witticisms" - or read David Rogers's - "are like the grotesque carvings in a gothic cathedral. It is plain that in his mind they have not the slightest tinge of conscious irreverence. They are simply his natural mode of expression; forbid him to be humorous, and you might as well forbid him to speak at all ... He is a mystic with a sense of humour, or rather, his habitual mood is determined by an attraction towards the two opposite poles of humour and mysticism ... He seems to be held back from abandoning himself to the

  ecstasies of abstract meditation chiefly by his peculiar sense of humour ... His is the sentiment of reverence blended with scepticism. It is a contradictory sentiment. But then the essence of humour is to be contradictory."' Lang looked up. 'End of quote. Nutshell,' he said. 'Incidentally, Stephen wrote before the Freudian analysis of the function of wit and humour as being that of reconciling opposing impulses in the mind by verbal dexterities and ambiguities. His perception's pretty shrewd.'

  David was astonished. 'But, Bruce, you wouldn't want me any other way, would you?'

  'It would take seven years on a couch, and cost rather a lot.' Lang said practically. 'And afterwards you'd be hard put to write the lyric for so much as a nursery rhyme.'

  'I'll think about it.'

  'So will I. Remember I'll be qualified and able to certify you in three years.'

  David nodded dubiously. 'Pack up the piccolo, eh?'

  'You'd have to hand in the lot, I'm afraid. But it might just free you of the boy business.'

  There was silence for some moments. David gulped down smoke like Furlow.

  'Would you like a fourth glass of my Port?' Lang asked a little dryly.

  'No, Bruce; absolutely no, thank you.' David let his eyes stray about the room. Lang was a better St. Cecilia, man than him. The tobacco jar on the mantelpiece all but had the college arms on it. 'Why don't we take a trip down to school next Sunday?'

  'No, David. I've said never again, and meant it. Not after the way you behaved last time.'

  'Oh, yes. But it was those sinister omens, remember? Electrical storms, and those owls hovering over the Plain.'

  'You know it was nothing of the kind.'

  'Oh, all right.' David was struggling. The rubber bands were fastened to his collar and eyelids. 'Look. I really came to ask you to peel off layers of memory and produce a man of the past.'

  'We're drinking port, not wood alcohol!'

  'I know - wood port, actually. I mean recall an earlier on your journey to beatification. Not as far back as Confirmation, which is always understandable given that one's been born British, or even as far back as low Anglicanism, but to high Anglicanism - to your St. Cecilia's Temple days …'

  'Why?' Lang asked warily.

  'I want to use the organ.'

  'Very understandable, but these things are best done within the sacrament of matrimony.'

  David opened his eyes with a jerk. 'Why, that was superb! The double First Jesuit couldn't have put it across so suavely! I meant the Temple organ.'

  Lang looked sheepish. 'What do you want to know about it?'

  'Simply whether that mad organist is likely to play it around midnight, and whether any of that lot are liable to nip in for a pray at that hour?'

  'I can't guarantee an answer to either, and anyway, if you want to play the thing why don't you ask? Why do you want to use it?'

  'I'm composing a cantata.'

  'Aren't they usually orchestrated?'

  'Yes - so'll mine be. But I can convert for organ as I go along. Adds extra spontaneity.'

  Lang considered his port. 'I don't think old Bull's likely to play in the middle of the night; but obviously people go into the Chapel to pray at all hours. I don't see why that should disturb you?'

  'I'm shy, you know.'

  Somewhere above the attic the St. Cecilia's clock began to strike. The sound seemed to crash down on them. David thought he could hear Lang's collection of porcelain tinkling.

  'Lord – tutorial!'

  'Lang. or Lit.?'

  'Lit. But what's the difference except that Thompson never turns up until ten past the hour? Goes to the lavatory between each tutorial. I've got to fly, boy!' David was up with a grunt. 'Thank you, Bruce. Good port. I really must give you one of those wall-shields with the college arms on it.'

  He closed the door and picked up his gown, which he'd thrown down outside. To work, Rogers. Public School and the Old-Stone B.A. is the pathway to success. They start angling you that way when you're seven. How can they be wrong? He clattered down the back staircase that served the attic rooms.

  Chapter 9

  David paused outside the canon's door. The Great Quad was deserted, and the evening sun was washing the buildings with gold. There must have been some wind in the world outside for high overhead rooks were drifting along vacant diagonal planes with their wings quite still. Probably they were being blown from the great beeches in the park. The echoes of the clock had died away and David thought of the carp corning to the surface again in the pond, and then of the goldfish, whose splendour was being eaten away by a skin virus.

  There was a movement in the mouth of the Temple on the far side of the quad. A small boy emerged, pulling an opera cloak over his shoulder, another appeared, and then Tony. Tony walked towards the Hall and stood looking down at a new gargoyle the masons had left lying on the terrace. He raised one foot and put it down on the tenon at the base of the creature's head. He fumbled in the jacket pocket of his suit, and then raised his thumbs to his teeth. The boy continued to stand alone like a pocket Napoleon. He seemed far away; an ant, almost, inside the battlemented castle of Cecilia. He stared up at the scaffold-covered front of the Hall, and David could tell by the way he held his head that he must be screwing up his eyes against the sun. The boy's cloak stirred slightly; it caressed the back of his bare knees, and then floated out behind him. David let his eyes travel up from the boy to the rooks wheeling high above the college. A moment later the sixteen boys had gathered together and the column of black cloaks began to move out across the Great Quad. It wound round the pond and passed between the gigantic door
s beneath the Bell Tower.

  The canon was on top of him. David turned to go, but it was too late. He was still in his vestments and must have come straight from the service. His approach was like the progression of one of these mechanical bears that amble along sniffing the ground when you pull them behind you on a string. The old man peered up at David. He had sausage skin instead of eyelids. 'What can I do for you, young man?'

  'Nothing, sir. Thank you. I've been calling on your attic lodger.'

  'Good heavens! Is there someone living up there?' The canon put both hands on the stick beneath his chest. His eyes clouded as if a bit of the sausage membrane had strayed. 'Why yes, of course! Young Kitchener. A fine Greek scholar, and a military sort of fellow too. God bless my soul!'

  'No, sir,' David stammered. 'Lang. Bruce Lang. And he's a Roman.'

  The canon appeared to be recollecting himself. 'One of the Paraveccini twins? Claudio, perhaps - or Hippolyt. I must ask him to breakfast.'

  David felt a bit like Tony with the Ghoul around. 'I meant a Catholic.'

  'Ah! Would we were all as tolerant as Paraveccini! His cousin, Karl of Saxe-Coburg, is such a very nice fellow too – why!' he teetered around like a weather cock 'I do believe

  that's his man over there!'

  David followed his gaze. The only person in the quad was the master, making his way briskly to his Lodging.

  'Such fine fellows these Prussians,' the canon mused.

  'Do you know the Sandels?' David asked. 'The last of the Sandels?' He realised he'd spoken the name purely for the kick of doing so.

  'We've never had a Sandel up,' the canon said. 'Never heard of them.' He put his head and one hand to his door. David opened it for him. 'I do hope you'll come to breakfast,' the canon said and disappeared.