Sandel

by Angus Stewart

  'Do you know any more poems - I mean rhymes?' Tony asked.

  David spun the dead match into the wastepaper basket. 'There's one about the rug you're sprawling on.'

  'What, this mat!'

  'Exactly. It's mohair. I think the rhyme should particularly appeal to you'

  'Go on, then!' Tony grinned.

  'All right. It's called The Mohair Sheep.

  'The mohair sheep

  Is two feet deep.

  He may be worn,

  Shorn;

  Or tinned,

  Skinned.

  Spread flat,

  As a mat,

  He will dispose

  Of cold toes;

  For he has a pile on

  Superior to nylon.'

  David spoke the last line with deliberation. Tony laughed and ran his fingers through the long hair of the rug. 'Did you make that up?'

  David had to admit that he had.

  'Just now?'

  ''Fraid so.'

  'Good Lord!' said the boy slowly. He turned his head into the shaft of sunlight coming through the window, and then back into the shadow. It was like the effect you get when low cloud chases a band of gold across the face of a cornfield. Tony began to laugh. 'I'm sorry! I really am" But I think it's a goat, not a sheep!'

  'Blast!' David said. The kettle was boiling.

  Feeding Tony was an unpredictable business. Happily, Mrs. Kanter's cake assumed precedence over the meringues and eclairs David had imported. The boy began almost too properly with bread; modified the regime with strawberry jam, making careful equation between the pulp and the whole fruit, and then started in on Mrs. Kanter's cake. Eventually be sat back and nodded towards the pile of records on the floor.

  'In that Vienna Boys' did you notice a bad German accent in Mendelssohn's Elfenchor?'

  'No, I don't think so.'

  'Well, there is one; and it's me.'

  'Really? I hope they paid you a suitable fee. They must make thousands out of those recordings. My God! And I had to pay special duty on that to import the native genius of Sandel!'

  'Yes, we're often exploited.'

  'Like Tropical Fish? How are they, by the way?'

  'Oh, very well, thank you.' Tony seemed to have drifted off somewhere.

  'Shall we play the record?' David suggested.

  Tony was back in his body with a bound. 'What! When you've got the real me? We don't want anything canned like the mohair sheep-goat!'

  David looked into the sun. For a second he had to compress his lips tightly.

  'Can I see your camera first, though?'

  David fetched the camera and handed it to the boy. Tony had got up too, and was bouncing gently on the edge of the bed.

  'What sort is it?'

  'A Rolleiflex 2.8E2,' David said and felt rather foolish.

  Tony turned the reflex over curiously. 'Does it take very big pictures?'

  'Well, you can enlarge them pretty big if they're black and white ones.'

  'How big?'

  'Oh, about the size of that wall.'

  Tony looked at the wall 'I don't believe you! You're joking!' David heard him swallow. Perhaps it was a nervous gesture that made him suddenly straighten his tie. 'Do they really make paper that big?'

  'You wouldn't use paper. You would black out the room, paint chemicals on the wall, and project the negative on to it from the other side of the road. Then, still in the dark, you'd swab down the wall with more chemicals, using one of those brooms on a long handle they have for washing trains. Finally, you'd sit in the middle of the room squirting it with a hose for about three hours. After that you could turn the lights on, and there'd be a huge Tony permanently printed the wall'

  David glanced at the boy. The tie-straightening hadn't been nervous at all.

  'Can we?' Tony asked.

  'Definitely not! It would be rather complicated, and might annoy my landlady.'

  'The water, I suppose.'

  'Exactly.'

  Tony looked into the viewfinder. 'Show me how it works. It seems to have a lot of knobs.'

  'What's an aperture?'

  'An opening,' Tony said without hesitation. 'It needs to be very wide for colour. But why does the film need more light for colour?'

  'For the same reason that you don't go out to paint roses in your garden at midnight - or even at dusk. Your eyes, and the film, need more light to see colours accurately.'

  'Can you take colour inside?'

  'Well, you can.'

  'Can you, I mean?' Tony was looking at the gold bars of his thighs where they protruded from his soft shorts; then he looked down distastefully at the wine and blue band of his socks.

  'It's better in sunlight.'

  Tony nodded sagely. 'Do you like taking photographs?'

  For a moment David hesitated. 'Yes - and no. It's an impure art; yet one with the demands of art proper, I suppose - like writing music. It's fascinating; but it can become an obsession - a technological, and a visionary obsession.'

  'How do you mean - an "obsession"?'

  David came back to him with a jerk. He looked at the boy sitting beside him on the bed. 'Its rather like combing your hair ten times a day; like knotting your tie in just the right place and - and worrying about your suit'

  Tony got slowly to his feet. With sudden violence he dragged crooked fingers through his hair; he pulled his tie viciously aside, and then, for good measure, seized the front of his shorts and drew them round over one hip, so that they hung absurdly twisted. He stared back at David with a look that mingled defiance with a conspiracy altogether alien to his years.

  David got up, and pressed him briefly against his side. 'We sing! What's it going to be?'

  Tony grinned wildly, and then looked at his toe-caps. Well, my speciality - my showpiece that is - is Mozart's Benedictus from the Requiem. But we need an alto, a tenor and a bass, he added doubtfully.

  David looked at him incredulously. He thought of the soprano melody reaching high up beneath the fan vaulting of Rheims, where he had once heard the Requiem performed live. 'Can you really do that?'

  'Oh, yes.' Tony was almost off-hand, but was looking at his toe-caps again.

  'You won't want whisky, or something?'

  The boy giggled; but David hadn't meant it as a joke. He doubted whether he would be able to control his fingers.

  'Tell you what,' Tony said. 'Let's keep that until we can rake in Hamley or someone for the alto. I'll just do the Laudate Dominum from the hundred and sixteenth psalm-setting now. Do you know it?'

  David sat down heavily on the piano stool, and pummelled his face like Furlow. The truth was the anti-climax must hurt him more than the boy knew. The serenity of the soprano cantilena demanded a discipline no boy would tackle casually, and even then it was something an English boy was unlikely to have been trained for. He looked up.

  'All right. I'll keep the violin line going to support you, and just throw a hand at the orchestra when I get the chance. I'll play the introduction twice, so you'll know where you are. Okay?'

  Tony nodded. He had become very attentive. The plate with its silver wire was resting in a little pool on the top of the cheap upright.

  David began to play; feeling the notes, not seeing them. 'That's your violin now,' he said quietly.

  The next few minutes David was never to be able to recall with any reality. His fingers explored the depth and resonance of the boy's voice, and then the voice was informing his fingers directly, so that the accompaniment rose to support it in perfect harmony. Tony's voice was uncanny in its control and projection. It opened before the senses like the living petals of a flower whose evolution has been miraculously speeded in a Disney film. It was smooth and firm like the play of a fountain: a stream of silver when it aspired to the sky, its source was mellow as pewter. Over the lower soprano range his tone was superb: almost mezzo, as he had said; almost alto, and yet not quite either.

  Tony was reaching for his plate. He clipped the wire over h
is teeth.

  David said, 'You're the greatest advance in music since they curled up the French horn, Tony!' He had put his arm round the boy. Feigning exhaustion, Tony sank down on to his knee. The patches of heat were on his cheeks again, and David sensed the exhaustion only masked embarrassment. He said nothing. Tony shifted his weight and snuggled his hip into David's stomach. David closed his eyes. His mouth and nose were filled with the boy's fine hair. 'Off!' he ordered.

  Deliberately the boy twisted round. He pressed his hot, frightened face against David's mouth. David felt the silver wire cutting his lip. He compressed his eyes more tightly. The purple patches deep inside them exploded into pendants of fire. Gently he pushed the boy off his knee.

  'I've written you a cantata,' David said blankly. Tony was still flushed, but with a triumphant radiance. David took a manuscript from the top of the piano. 'Here. Look it over while I clear the things.'

  He stacked the tea things on a tray, and carried the uncertainly tinkling crockery to the bathroom on the other site of the landing. He sat down on the cold linoleum, and was overcome by uncontrollable shaking. He bowed his head and extended his useless hands before his eyes.

  When David returned to his room Tony was lying curled up on the mohair rug. With one hard he was idly turning over David's manuscript score: the other was inverted with the third and index ringers contentedly buried in his mouth. The boy's jacket was undone exposing a pullover, with the wine and blue bands at its neck and waist, which tightly sheathed his torso. Doubtless all-wool, too, David thought inconsequently. Then he realised that although Tony had seen him he hadn't taken the fingers out of his mouth. Instead, he indicated a page of the score with his unoccupied hand, and looked up.

  'This bit's Bach' he said through the wet fingers.

  'Very probably. It's difficult not to crib a bit sometimes - usually it's unconscious.'

  Tony withdrew the fingers from his mouth, wiping them on the rug and not his suit. 'I like it,' he said clearly.

  David said nothing. The boy had regained his composure, and his colour had returned to the dulled richness that was like antique gold: but he didn't want to risk saying anything which might bring the passion back. 'I thought we might perform it together if you can comp again next Saturday.'

  Tony gave the mohair a heavy blow. 'Damn! I can't. It's the last night of the Eights, and the Ghoul wants me to go down and sort of support the college boat. He's a bit funny about boats, and rowing and things.'

  David refrained from suggesting that the Ghoul was a bit funny about more than just boats and rowing and things. Instead he reversed the upright chair at his desk, straddled it, and looked over its back at the boy. 'Tell me more'

  Tony drew up his knees beneath him on the rug. He shrugged his neat shoulders casually. 'Well, the idea is that I have to wear white shorts, and my own blazer and boater ...'

  'And look pretty on the St. Cecilia's barge!' David finished for him.

  'Well, yes.' Tony seemed to he looking for small animals in the fleece of the mohair.

  David controlled himself with difficulty, 'Tony, this Ghoul has no business to suggest such a thing. I - I think it's absurd. I mean - do you really want to do it?'

  Unwittingly, he seemed to have released an appalling dilemma in the boy. For a minute Tony shook his head desperately, still searching the fleece of the rug. Then he cried out, 'No! Well, no! I think it, silly too. And I hate the Ghoul, and I - I like being with you but …' He seemed unable to finish the argument.

  'What is it then, Tony?'

  The boy's reply was almost sulky. 'You see, well ... I thought I might he able to keep the white shorts afterwards.'

  'I see.' David got up and walked round the room. It wasn't the moment to face his own jealousy, or weigh the morality of pandering to the boy's odd vanity. 'Who am I?'

  'David.'

  'Exactly. And this afternoon I'm your ... ?

  'Brother?'

  'Even so.' David stopped. 'Now supposing I were to buy you your blinking white shorts - always supposing the things come in all-wool ...'

  Tony had taken up a corner of the mohair and buried his nose in it.

  I'll remain your brother - don't see why the hell I shouldn't. On Saturday next I'll take you out. Official. Filial concern for your wardrobe. Aunt's orders. Overhaul. Family celebration or whatever. However … you'd better know nothing of this until your headmaster announces the impending visit of your brother. Is that clear?'

  'Think so.'

  'Right. Now stop behaving indecently with that woolly rug.'

  'Yes.' Tony dropped the corner of the mat at once.

  'I was going to suggest that you break out tonight, and that we have a shot at the cantata with the Chapel organ. But it would have to be at about eleven o'clock, and I think you'll be too tired.'

  'No, really, I won't be!' Tony said urgently. He held out his watch, and David had the impression that his objections were big anticipated methodically.

  'My watch is luminous, and I never go to sleep early. Then, tomorrow I'll have a bad cold and spend the day in bed because I've got the matrons taped. Really it will be all right!'

  'When does the master on duty do his last round, or whatever?'

  'It's Chambers tonight. He doesn't.'

  The boy explained the layout of the back of the building, and at last David said, 'All right. Then one, you mustn't leave the passage until I meet you; and two, you must take the day off tomorrow.'

  Tony said, 'I promise.' He was calm now.

  David laid a finger on his nose. Tell me - what's it for?'

  Tony moved his nose up and down beneath the finger, He grinned widely. 'What?'

  'The wire.'

  'Oh, the side ones.'

  'I thought it might be calculated decoration. Or perhaps an artificial sounding board for coloratura.'

  Tony brought his right foot up and placed it against the calf of his left leg. Perilously balanced, his hips swayed. 'Ho! Hum!' he said darkly.

  Tony picked up the manuscript score. I'd better take this and look it over this evening, hadn't I?'

  'Yes.' They synchronised their watches; David more self-consciously than the boy.

  On the stairs Tony said, 'Should I say thank you to your landlady for the cake?'

  'Put your head in there,' David replied. He went on down the stairs.

  Chapter 11

  David crouched in the shrubbery. In front of him, in the darkness, was a totally strange house. There was no question of deja-vu: somewhere he had done this before. Then he had it. Of course! Lang would remember well enough. He had been drunk then, and had had a crazy uncertainty that if he was apprehended he had only to say, 'Don't shoot; I'm drunk!' and that everything, mysteriously, would be all right. David smiled as he thought now of Lang, tucked up in bed and befuddled by port. He began to move forward again.

  An ill-tethered bull suddenly loomed up at him; but proved to be a rose bush. He was under the walls of the house and had found the back door. With infinite caution he turned the handle and it gave before him. He was standing in a narrow passage. At least he'd made the right house. In the gloom he became aware of a row of caps and raincoats hung on pegs, and a line of Wellington boots with numbers painted on them was ranged along the wall beneath them.

  As his eyes became accustomed to the light, David realised that the passage in which he was standing gave at right angles on to what must be the front hall. He moved cautiously forward. It was in fact the hall, and in the middle of it a night‑light was burning.

  Suddenly David froze. A lavatory had been flushed inches from his ear. A door banged, and a small boy in a dressing-gown was bundling sleepily towards him along the passage. He glanced up at David: 'Good night, sir.'

  'Good night,' David said gruffly; but the boy had already gone into a downstairs dormitory. David retreated to the back passage. It was five to eleven.

  From above him he heard a board creak; then the descent of slippers on uncarpeted stairs. The ne
xt moment Tony was beside him. The boy had put on his flannel shorts and a pullover on top of pyjamas. Now he took a coat from one of pegs.

  'Will you be warm enough?' David whispered.

  Tony nodded and grinned. He was wide awake.

  The climb into St. Cecilia's was accomplished with only minor abrasions to David's forearms as he lowered the boy over the six-foot wall into the Master's garden. Someone must recently have oiled the Temple doors, for they swung open without a creak. The great Chapel was dark and silent, but David could sense the proud expanses of Gothic space soaring above them. It was deliciously cool after the black-treacle night. 'Have you got the score?'

  'Yes,' the boy whispered back.

  'Right; lead me to the organ loft.'

  Tony led him surely through the darkness up the aisle. Then they were climbing wooden stairs. There was a click, and a deep humming filled the darkness. 'It's all set,' Tony said more loudly.

  David felt about him, and a faint light sprang up over the two-manual instrument. It was a beautiful thing: probably the finest early English organ in the country, it had been built by Thomas Dallam between 1605 and 1606. He looked at the boy. 'Think you know it well enough?'

  'Well enough,' Tony echoed confidently. He took the score out of his pocket and laid it on the music rest. Then he took of his coat and folded it up on the floor. Standing again, he contemplated his strange array of clothes. 'Feel how thick my behind is.'

  David felt. 'Like an apricot. Only the fur's grey,' he said. 'Now, let, get on with it.'

  The boy drew nearer, looking over David's shoulder. David's hands began to move over the manuals. Now his feet joined them unthinkingly, with an integral continuum of the rhythm. The sound of the organ came up from the darkness below, and filled the darkness above them. David adjusted stops, and drew out the vox humana. The chorus whispered, then fell deferentially away, leaving only the melody of a single reed. He nodded his head.