Sandel

by Angus Stewart

  Tony was in his element now. The sensuous animal had entirely disappeared, and his whole being had become an instrument of sound. Hid voice flashed. It became fluid and irrepressible; seeping into the black crannies of the rood screen, and aching its soft cadences against the invisible petals of the fan vaulting. Now it floated down as reluctantly as an autumn leaf, or plunged purposeful as a cormorant from a height. As surely it rose again until the walls and ceiling of the great Chapel must be left mysteriously gilded. There was no doubt at all about the alto depths. Tony could negotiate anything sung by the late Kathleen Ferrier.

  The Chapel lights had come on. Abruptly the boy's voice broke off. David dropped a phrase, caught it as it slipped, and continued to play. He put out his hand to reassure the boy, and then stopped playing altogether. Footsteps were echoing on the stone floor below them; then their note changed unmistakably to a wooden thud on the organ-loft stairs. Lang appeared at their head.

  'Christ!' David exclaimed.

  'No, not this time. Just me.' Lang looked curiously at Tony, and then back at David. 'Traditional scene,' he murmured.

  'Vertical drop,' David countered pleasantly, motioning towards the parapet.

  Lang sat down at the head of the stairs, drawing a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. Then he apparently thought better of it. David meanwhile had recovered.

  The road to Rome doesn't lie this way?

  "Bat perhaps for you the road to Ithaca does,' Lang replied unequivocally.

  'This is Tony,' David said.

  Lang looked disinterested. 'Hallo, Tony.'

  Tony said nothing.

  'David,' Lang began heavily, still toying with the cigarettes, 'infringement of copyright ...'

  'Don't you think we'd better talk French in front of the child?' David enquired ironically.

  Lang looked sour. 'I rather doubt if it would be any use anyway.' He heaved his gangling form to its feet, and tentatively pressed a note. When the sound had died away, he looked deliberately from the instrument to the boy. 'What's the tune tonight, Manual; or oral?'

  David got up. His fists were clenched with rage and his jaw quivered. 'If you want to be martyred in an Anglican conventicle, Bruce, just stay where you are for five seconds longer!'

  Lang raised an appeasing hand. 'That might be a little awkward - so good night, David.' He gestured towards Tony 'And don't forget to take that home where it belongs.' He turned and clumped heavily down the stairs. A moment later the Chapel was plunged into darkness again.

  'Do you know him?' the boy asked.

  'Yes; it'll be all right. But I think we'd better stop now. I'm sorry, Tony - and thank you!' Suddenly David smiled in the bluish light that illuminated the organ. 'I suppose you know that yours is no ordinary voice?'

  'Oh, yes.' Tony was dispassionate. The next few months should see me at the peak of my career, I think.'

  'Can I stick with you?'

  'You can be my manager'

  'What did he mean - about Ithaca,' Tony asked, when they had successfully negotiated the Master's wall, and were advancing through the shrubbery.

  'I don't quite know.' David replied after a moment. "Ithaca was the home of Odysseus, where he returned after his wanderings. Things weren't altogether happy when he got back. But you don't often need to take Bruce seriously.'

  'I see. I will be able to come out with you on Saturday, though, won't I?'

  'Don't worry! Just wait till the headmaster tells you I'm coming.'

  They had reached the door. David lowered his voice. 'Now don't forget to take the day off tomorrow. If I see you about, there'll be trouble!'

  'I promise.'

  'All right. Good night, Tony.' He watched the boy tiptoe down the passage. At the corner he turned and waved. David waited until he heard the door closing safely above him, and silence settle once more over the house.

  David swallowed four grains of seconal with a mouthful of the Balliol man's milk. He took a bite of the Brighton rock, and lay back on his bed thinking about the boy. The seconal dropped doughnuts on his eyes. He could hear the boy now, and see him too. But he was beginning to see something else: Tony reflected in the ground-glass screen of the Rollei. A thousand facets of Tony revealed by the multiple eye of a fly. A thousand faces in some surrealist film trapped in the bubbles of a glass of champagne. He closed his eyes more tightly. He was being catapulted down at one of the bubbles. For a second it ballooned up to meet him: a shimmering convex surface with Tony encased inside it. The bubble broke, wetly tickling his ears. His face was pressed against the warmth of Tony's pullover. Then he was through that too and plunging into darkness.

  Chapter 12

  The week seemed interminable; and the heat was scarcely endurable. It was a clammy, sick-room heat, that swabbed the body with sweat, and peeled the paint from outside window-sills. David tried to play the piano, but his fingers slipped off the keys as if someone had anointed them with glycerine. He wiped his fingers on the mohair, and tried again, but with the same result. He wondered whether he should pick a fight with the barber or the Balliol atomist. He decided the barber might prove too tough, and the atomist, with Finals approaching, lived leaded in his room, or some Parks Road laboratory, like an isotope. Apparently he still ate breakfast; but he had acquired a stock of pre-1945 U.S. war surplus dried milk in tins, which he mixed with Nescafe. He had forgotten to cancel the third of a pint of strontium delivered daily at his door, and David drank it regularly.

  On Sunday Mrs. Kanter trapped him on the landing. He learnt that his little brother was 'sweet' and 'a cherub', and that he was 'such a good-looking boy'. David shuddered. Somehow he slid a smile on to the sweat of his fact like a water transfer. He liked Mrs. Kanter.

  During the mornings he spent long hours working on the Series 4, and cursed the convention that prevented race meetings being held mid-week. At lunch-time he bought vaguely green bits and pieces from a delicatessen in the closed market. In the evenings he had sandwiches and beer at the Bird and Baby. He suddenly felt the need for a splash of colour, a summer freshness in his room. He bought a selection of oranges and lemons, and then searched the cattle market for a bowl to put them in.

  The card in the bank said Tuesday, and banks weren't often wrong about things like that. David stepped into a telephone kiosk, still bundling the dirty notes they always seemed to give him nowadays into his wallet. He ran his finger down a column of the directory. He would never have believed the place had so many affiliated offices and telephones, but there it was - Headmaster, Choir School: the Rev. R. H. Jones.

  David read the name in dismay, then looked quickly in the G.P.O. mirror. 'Jones,' he muttered, 'the Reverend Jones.' He dialled the number and inserted four pennies. One came straight through. Why did people always give him notes like tramps' underclothes and pennies too thin for lavatories? He dropped in a square-jawed George VI and spun the dial again furiously.

  'Jones?' a voice said.

  David pressed button A. Counterpoint, he thought. 'Hallo? Headmaster? This is Tony Sandel's brother. Look,' David could feel the comma in the air; a beautiful, Wagnerian pause.

  'I'm going to be in Oxford on Saturday, and I wondered whether you'd let me take Tony out for the day,'

  'Why, certainly, Mr. Sandel! I'm so glad!'

  'My name is Rogers, actually. A half brother.'

  'Why, of course, how silly of me. Mr. Rogers.'

  David prayed that Tony's aunts never went near the place. With luck even the bills went straight to executors. 'Well, that's very good of you. Actually, I'd rather like to have him out to dinner too. It's something of a family anniversary,' David lied, ignoring the G.P.O. mirror now.

  'Certainly! Certainly!' Jones' voice became almost reproachful. 'But won't you came and have lunch with us first?'

  Why, yes. Thank you.' It was one of those decisions one could worry about afterwards.

  'That's settled, then. I'll tell Peter straight away.'

  'Tony,' said David. 'Tony Sandel.' He di
dn't see himself picking choirboys out of bran tubs.

  'Merciful Heavens! What can have come over me!' Jones said, like a splash falling from an alcoholic's glass. 'Saturday lunch, them; you'll take Tony out for the afternoon, and for dinner!' The Reverend had recovered triumphantly. David looked curiously into the earpiece of the receiver to see if the man's smile was visible there.

  'Tank you, Mr. Jones. I'll look forward to seeing you on Saturday them. Goodbye.'

  David put the receiver down, and leaned heavily against the glass wall of the kiosk. It was like being in a battery incubator that had short-circuited. 'Checkmate, Ghoul,' he said aloud.

  There was an insistent thumping on the side of the kiosk. David brought his nose to the glass like a goldfish. Daylight didn't become Gloria. She opened the door and squeezed into the kiosk, parting the curtain of hair before her eyes. The sprung door pressed her against David.

  'Driven to the call-box system?' she purred. 'Thoughtless Wolfenden.'

  'You seem to have got off the streets yourself,' David said, struggling for air.

  'That's rather horrid, darling' Gloria was fingering the knot of his tie. She pushed his Adam's apple up out of the way like a tiresome door latch. The latch fell back into place involuntarily.

  'You know the Proctors' regulation about undergraduates not loitering where they might make "undesirable acquaintances". Blow, Gloria. Or at least let me.' He realised that she was undoing his tie. 'What are telephone boxes made of, Gloria?'

  'Why, glass mostly, I suppose:

  'We're in one,' David said, delivering the words singly like eardrops.

  There was a sharp rap on the door. David caught a glimpse of a ferociously wielded plastic umbrella, and of a queue forming outside. He heaved Gloria out and stood on the pavement. She'd gone, he realised, drawing a hand across his body like an octopus taking leave of a favourite rock.

  'Young man, were you molesting that woman in there?'

  It was the woman with the plastic parasol; an ugly looking, sawed-off job. Dook, David thought. Deep South. Brize Norton.

  'I must ask you to tell me your name and college,' the woman squeaked, looking round at the queue for support. David looked at the sawed-off and decided to forget Dook. 'Cymbeline Smith,' he said pleasantly. 'Magdalen. I'm a Fellow.' He limped away.

  There was no mail in college. David looked up at the square of sky above the Great Quad. What must be God's Wednesday sun blazed motionlessly above the clock tower. Perhaps He just wasn't reckoning on withdrawing it tonight. Then what? The academic year would be upset, and there would be embarrassed consultations at Greenwich, he supposed.

  He wandered across the Great Quad, which Nero wouldn't have scorned for chariot races, and went out into St. Cecilia's park. A long way away a figure was sitting by itself on the fence at the bottom of the school field. Even as David watched another came up to it and pulled it off the railings. Tony followed the other boy reluctantly, kicking listlessly at the baked earth. He flexed his ankles like a finely bred trotting horse; then he began an exaggerated goose-step, putting his hands on his hips, and throwing back his head. Suddenly he turned a somersault.

  David bit his lip and set course for Walton Street. It was nearly half past five and some of the shops were beginning to close. Suddenly he veered off the Cornmarket and through the doors of Messrs. Elliston and Cavell. Hunches, he reflected, finding himself in Prams, were best played out instantly. Possibly this lore was becoming a conditioned reflex with him. He threaded his way through Perfume, and found a departments directory.

  David took the stairs. A girl lolled behind a broad counter. She had orange lipstick laid on with a palette-knife; a reaction probably to the uniform black dress she was wearing. David consulted an imaginary piece of paper in his wallet.

  'It is you that does New College School, isn't it?' His voice held a shade of calculated distraction.

  The girl nodded. She was investigating her hair with a pencil which had a road safety Belisha beacon on the end. David consulted his piece of paper and hummed a few bars of Buxtehude. He looked up again.

  'I want a pair of socks.'

  'Size?' The girl seemed to have found whatever site wanted with the blinking beacon.

  'I've no idea.' David was vague again.

  'Age, then?'

  'Thirteen.'

  'Has he got big feet?'

  'Certainly not!' It occurred to David that she couldn't yet have been broken in on Nylons, calling brown oatmeal, and yellow honey.

  'Six-and-a-half, I should think,' the girl said. Some of the lipstick had rubbed off on to her teeth. She opened a drawer behind her, and flapped a pair of socks down on the counter. It was true. The grey socks had a brilliant red band, a pure, baby-wear white one, and a black one. Poor Tony.

  'They look flat,' David said, 'two-dimensional.'

  The girl thrust her arm into one, and looked at him pityingly,

  'Oh, I see. I suppose they've got nylon in them?'

  'These are the socks, you know,' the girl said.

  A small woman like a well-drilled Guinness bottle was advancing from behind another counter. 'All right, Peel.' David thought she was going to blow a whistle. Peel moved away. 'Can I help you, sir?' asked the guidemistress in mufti. David put preoccupation carefully back on to his face, and indicated the socks. 'I've just bought these,' he said slowly. 'I wonder though if you could tell me whether you do an all-wool flannel suit?'

  The half-pint woman carne to attention. 'We only stock an all-wool nylon reinforced one. It's very warm, and it's the uniform. Achilles.'

  'I beg your pardon?'

  'Achilles brand.'

  'Oh, I see.'

  The woman appeared to be engaged in some mathematical equation with the socks on the counter. She reached behind her without looking, unhooked a grey suit from a row of them, laid it on the counter, and began to fold it up. 'This is his size she said with the certainty of Confucius. 'That will be just seven pounds all told.'

  'You misunderstand.' David was alarmed. 'The suit must be all-wool. It mustn't have long trousers as this one seems to have. And, anyway, I don't want it just at the moment.'

  The woman abruptly ceased patting and folding, and looked him sharply up and down as if he was a delinquent Brownie. Then she must have remembered Lady Baden-Powell, for she suddenly softened. David prepared to clasp her left hand. 'You'll have to go to Harrods or Neal Frazers for an all-wool flannel now, sir, I'm afraid.'

  'I see. Harrods or Neal Frazers. Thank you very much. I'll just take the socks.

  'Very well, sir. I expect you'd like our current go Boys' Wear catalogue though, wouldn't you?'

  'Yes, please,' said David humbly.

  The woman trotted off, and David's gaze strayed over the display cards of elfin-eyed little boys strutting around in Chilprufe underwear, and an assortment of brilliantly coloured prep school caps. Perhaps they were afraid of losing pupils in the snow. He picked up a pair of pants that was lying the counter and looked at them curiously.

  'Good afternoon,' an unsteady voice said behind him. David swung round. It was Ricks. The old man tested the point of a toothpick protruding from his waistcoat pocket, and exclaimed, 'Extraordinary!'

  David dropped the pants uncomfortably. 'Men's Department, ground floor, sir,' he said.

  Ricks smiled like one of the poet Thompson's deprived sheep and pottered on his way.

  The woman proudly placed the catalogue before David on the counter. Politely he turned the pages. More elfin-eyed boys waving seaside buckets and starfish. 'Sun Splashed colours for Smaller Boys'; 'Ladybird Underwear with Lastex waists; 'Tough Sailcloth Shorts (chunky style in dove or Breton-red)'; 'Tomboy Playclothes both Rugged and Gay; 'Crew Neck Sweater (white and Caribbean blue)'; 'School Shorts (mid -grey and slate)'.

  'Thank you,' said David. He'd come to 'another superlative welted shoe for the junior boy', and a 'cool lightweight sandal".

  The woman seemed disposed to regard him indulgently. 'Have you tried
the Cathedral School stockist in Queen Street for the suit? I believe they have the Beau Brummell make, but I'm not sure whether they're a pure wool. All the school suits are a standard shade nowadays.'

  David smiled to himself as he imagined Tony debating whether the obvious attraction of Beau Brummell brand outweighed its being associated with Christ Church. 'No, but I think I'll stick to Harrods and Neal Frazers.'

  'Very good.' The woman began feeding the socks into a paper bag. 'Between you and me I think they may still stock a finer cloth than we often see in the provinces.' To David's horror she suddenly winked deprecatingly.

  'Oh, grand! Jolly good, then' he said hollowly. He picked up the parcel and descended in the lift.

  David hadn't forgotten the frog-flippers. He stepped outside into the Cornmarket again. The sun was trained down it like an ultra-violet searchlight. The tar-macadam was melted wet like Negroes' lips at the edge of the road. Cowley jostled on the pavement and overflowed amongst the traffic. Here and there was a gaggle of gown: suede-booted, sun-glassed and loud-voiced; many with girls folded over they arms like plastic raincoats. They owned the place; they said so, and that was it. David paused for breath. Cowley or the gown must go. There just wasn't physical space for both. He didn't mind which went.

  He fought his way through the crowd. Outside the Co-op he pressed himself flat against the window and looked in his wallet. It was disgraceful that St Cecilia's didn't supply her choirboys with frog-flippers gratuitously.

  'A very good model this,' the man said. They've just been tested in the South Seas. And you can wear them as snow-shoes too, see?' He bellowed with laughter; then became confidential, and lurched towards David across the counter.

  'What size, son?'

  David opened Elliston's paper bag and consulted the socks.

  'Six and a half.'

  'They'll he for a nipper then?'

  'For a boy.'

  'Ah!' The man's jaw was late Neanderthal. 'Nippers love flippers,' He guffawed helplessly, beating a hairy paw on the counter. 'What colour, now?' gassed the ape at last, clutching his stomach. 'Grey or black?'