Sandel

by Angus Stewart

  'Grey'

  Australiopithicus bundled the flippers into a bag and twisted its neck. 'Anything else, son? Mask, snorkel — anything like that?'

  'The boy doesn't need a mask or a snorkel,' David said. The innuendo was wasted.

  'Fair's fair, then. Fifty-nine and eleven. We don't charge for the bag.' The man began to bellow again. David waited to see if he would clap the money into his mouth.

  'I'm glad I've found you, Rogers,' Crawley said. David had the impression that the words were intended to express some profundity, rather than his physical seizure by the elbow. 'I have to buy some Oxford marmalade for Jean. Please accompany me.'

  Crawley steered him through the doors of a grocer and stood looking blankly at a row of hams. 'Have you any ideas at all about the state of culture among the working class _ do you think we've come to the right place ... miss?' he said experimentally to a shop girl, 'I want the marmalade counter.'

  'I've only one pair of hands now, haven't I?' the girl said. 'You'll have to wait your turn, won't you?'

  'Oh, very well.' said Crawley. 'When is it my turn, it's a large tin of Oxford marmalade I want. He turned back to David, who by now was suffering the familiar sensation of being stared at that seemed inevitable when one was with Crawley. 'They'll never become creative again, Rogers, but something must be done to raise the threshold of their receptivity.'

  "Who is this exactly?'

  Crawley looked at him curiously. 'The working class, Rogers. What have they in their lives? The Music Hall's dead, the church is dead, even pub singing is dead. What have they?'

  'Telly?' David suggested dutifully.

  'Exactly! Every bloody thing in their lives except sex is canned, man!' Crawley made a gesture that embraced grocery shelves and last-minute shoppers. 'And it's not only the working class. I could name you a dozen professional men with families who slump down in their chairs at five-thirty and switch on the box with the hand that isn't feeling for the slippers. Often they don't even look at the thing. It's just necessary environment, together with drawn curtains and lounging children.'

  'What are you objecting to: telly as an institution; or the fact that it's present and yet ignored? You haven't sold a play to the B.B.C. by any chance?'

  'I'm objecting to the fact that they have no goals except physical prosperity and bored survival. Sometimes, just sometimes, mark you, they'll make facetious pretensions to other values - unprompted apologies, simply perhaps because you or I are around. We believe in education, chaps, what ho? "Must send the boy to a public school, Crawley, old man only thing, really, wouldn't you say? Teaches a lad values, I always think. The wife's with me in this, Crawley. But then we've always tried to give him a good start. Bought him some books, you know, the other day. Has be shown you his books? He's a good lad. I can say that for him honestly, though he's my own. He's good about the television too; selects his programmes, which is more than you can say about our neighbours' children. Oh, he'll do. Have another drop of whisky, then we'll feed."' Crawley broke off the charade and looked pathetically at David. 'And what's behind this? Partly its acknowledgement of guilt. Reluctant, of course, because they've still the saving suspicion that they're incomplete human beings. For the rest,' he shrugged, 'it's fear. Fear that they or their sons may somehow fail to measure up to the accepted image of the caste. But what happens if you try to define that image? You can't. It exists only as a vague projection of their own self-esteem, and since that, like everything else in their lives, is unintelligible, how can its aspirations have coherence?' Crawley was staring gloomily at the hams again. For some time the shop girl had been lolling on the counter looking at them dryly. David became aware that a man was standing at the door, and that they were the last customers.

  'Yes?' the girl said.

  'A tin of Cooper's marmalade was what I asked for,' said Crawley. 'We must do everything in our power for these people,' he said to David. The medium for their self-discovery sits in every drawing room. It's up to us to provide an attractive primer, and then to lead them towards some sort of fulfilment - what does this mean, threepence off?'

  'It means it's just two shillings and nine pennies. These brown ones are the pennies,' the girl said, helping herself from Crawley's hand.

  'Our society is sick, Rogers; and the sick are responsible to no man. Take none of its dictums for granted. Test its every premise.'

  'Yes,' David said humbly.

  'Good night,' said the man at the door.

  David wandered up Walton Street resolving to spend the next day fitting new valve springs to the Series 4. If only there were a race now! For an hour his purpose would become simply defined. More importantly, perhaps, be would be away from Oxford. Sweeney's wife, Glad, was waiting for him at their basement window. 'If you're going to have women singing in your room like that Saturdays we'll make a complaint to Mrs. Kanter,' she said. 'It's not right.'

  David put the socks and flippers away. He peeled an inch of greaseproof paper from Tony's rock and took a bite. He wondered whether he should listen to Tony's bad German accent on the Vienna Boys' record, but decided against it. He wondered whether he could play the Benedictus from the Requiem without convincing Glad that he'd spirited in a whole harem, but decided against that too. He ran his finger blind along the bookshelf, but it stopped at Donne.

  David threw open a window and looked at the sky. It was like blood and water in a Japanese sunset. And there were the silver dart, high up, the, wings swept through a clean forty-five degrees: machines of matchless beauty, and of madness. He adjusted the lamp on his desk to give the room a comforting glow; then climbed into bed and pulled the sheet up so that it lay across his lip beneath his nose. He stared at the ceiling. After a moment he felt in the bedside cupboard and drew out one of McVitie's wholemeal digestives and a copy of Cherwell. He looked sleepily over the news headings, and masticated the biscuit under the sheet, while the fold of linen grew warmer on his lip. He opened the paper and allowed his eye to bounce like a punctured football down the column of personal notices. About three-quarters of the way down the page the football came to an uneasy halt. Violently, David sat up. He read the notice again.

  'Dissident Protestant requires immediately to meet beautiful little-boyish girl, preferably Catholic, with a view to holy matrimony. Applicants should measure 32-30-32 o.n.o. (the flatter the better): remedial orthodontic appliance and skinny brown legs an advantage. Apply in first instance: Bruce Lang: St. Cecilia's. Advertiser purposes deflect friend hyacinthine heresy.'

  For some time David wandered round his room muttering incoherently. Then, overcome by sudden weariness, he collapsed into the chair at his desk. Prudently, he wound only a card into the typewriter.

  Dear Bruce,

  Cherwell is really not very funny - however well-meaning your intentions. Lay off.

  Yrs. D

  He thrust the card, together with an insulting ten-shilling note, into an envelope and addressed it to Lang With a kinder second thought he removed the money. He took another bite of Tony's rock, and climbed into bed again.

  Chapter 13

  According to the English weathermen the anti-cyclone, which had blanketed the country with muggy air for the past few days, had now begun to 'collapse'. David, however, had once been told that the only way to determine Oxford's weather accurately was to ring the U.S. Air Force at Brize Norton and talk humbly about garden fetes, giant marquees and insurance. This he now did, and was immediately put through to the 'meteorological hut', which he imagined most probably looked something like Munich station. There he was informed in Dakotan tones that clear sunshine all day would not exceed 70 degrees centigrade, but that between five and twenty minutes after midnight rain would begin to fall, and continue to fall for roughly eleven hours. The speaker apologised for the approximations, and after switching in a tape-recorded invitation to a baseball match next Thursday, rang off.

  David decided he might safely leave the Series 4's hardtop in the garage. He settled down w
ith a cigarette, and looked at Lang's letter again.

  My Dear David,

  Notoriously, society has always forced the role of jester upon its oddities. This I think is what is happening to you. Medically speaking, the situation will become dangerous when the persons about you cease to exist in their own right, and become subjective distortions of your mind. Watch carefully for that time, and try to pray.

  There have been a couple of responses to my advertisement so far. A pair of St. Mary's girls, who insist, however, that anything they might do for you they must do together. Does this attract you? The other applicant is a town girl. She says she would 'dress up' and that she's 'done that sort of thing' for other people before. Thinking about this occurs to me that you could say 'shorts off!', or whatever it is you do say.

  None of these has quite the lascivious, wriggly look of the choirboy, but something better may turn up.

  Please get in touch with me at once. Let's talk about this.

  Ever, Bruce

  David leant hack and exhaled smoke. What a long way people would go in the maintenance of a lie. Lang lived a lie and Crawley's professional families were intent on following another that was only less explicitly defined. He, David, professed a series of lies with each new relationship he made, and this was because his guiding lie had as yet no definition at all. There was the weekly lie with his tutors, the uneasy explosive lie with Gloria, and a whole host of lesser lies that were like sextant readings designed to establish position, and provide corroborative assurance of identity. Only the more frequently recourse was made to such sounding, the obscurer identification became, and the paradox must eventually panic the traveller.

  The boy alone demanded no lie. The gaining of his company might call for subterfuge, but this was irrelevant, and a mere technicality. Where Lang's guiding lie was a priest-smothered God, and the professional families' a muddled expediency, his, David's, might prove to be the boy. If it was so, the deception had yet to be revealed to him.

  He got up. The maintenance of the personal lie might well explain the conflicts of men. Tony, he was sure, could happily liquidate China because their choirboys' shorts were wrong, while he had no illusions about himself. Glad, Brougham, and God knew how many Fellows of the Academy of Music were already as good as annihilated by his own pride. The thesis, though, might safely be left to Crawley. He would clearly martyr himself in the emancipation of his people. In the end he too would have lived out his lie. Almost timidly David struck a series of chords on the piano; testing the only constant truth he knew.

  At a quarter to one David drew the car up in the school drive. He observed with alarm that the front garden was filled with concrete gnomes. Undeterred, he rang the bell, and wondered whether this would he a proper occasion for that authoritative form of words, 'My name's Rogers'. He decided it would, and waited for an answer more easily. After two further rings, irreproachably spaced, the door was opened.

  There stood before him a young man wearing a disillusioned smile that was both fixed and faded like some tragic recording of natural photography left on a surviving wall at Hiroshima. Without moving the monument the man said: 'Yes?'

  'My name's Rogers. I believe you're expecting me.'

  'Oh, yes?' The man made no move to admit him. After a moment he said, 'But why did you ring?'

  David wondered how the Friends of St Cecilia who organised the annual choristers' party would react to this man, whose mind the little boys had clearly murdered. 'I had supposed it usual.' he said gently.

  'Oh, I see. Here we just come and go.'

  David noticed a gnome that was heading for the gate with a concrete brief-case; and another that was making straight for the porch with a garden roller. 'Yes; I suppose so,' he said. The young man now ushered him into the hall. 'School's finished.' he said.

  David affected dismay. 'No! What about government assistance?'

  'Morning school,' said the man, without any change of expression.

  David could now hear the hubbub of disbanding classes. The man pointed to a door and directed him to wait. 'The Reverend Jones should be down in a minute,' he said, and disappeared.

  'This was indeed the hall David had glimpsed on his night excursion. There was the nightlight, now extinguished. The walls were panelled with oak. From one a rather mangy bear's head gazed down at him. 'The others were given over to colour prints depicting the life of Little Jesus. Little Jesus, possessed of downy Pre-Raphaelite beauty, in the Temple; Little Jesus leading a woolly string of lambs, which were surely without authoritative precedent; and Little Jesus hitting a nail with a hammer in the carpentry shop. 'He's just like us, you know,' David murmured, looking curiously at this last.

  The room to which the martyr had directed him was very differently furnished. The panelling was an identical continuation of that in the hall, but was covered with a variety of cinema programmes, duty rotas, and blessed country bus schedules. Elsewhere the confusion was scarcely credible. There were half-consumed bottles of port and handle-less coffee cups full of sugar; a litter of little transparent triangles from Woolworth's geometrical sets; stone jars of ink: old gym shoes; spineless books; a squash racquet in three pieces, and the front wheel of a bicycle. Barely concealed behind a sofa in one corner was a modest barrel of bitter, with a ream of new pink blotting-paper under the tap to catch the drops.

  David leant against the mantelpiece and closed his eyes. Opening them again, he realised the shelf must be a repository of confiscations. There was a stone knotted into an expensive lawn handkerchief with a Cash's name tape that said 'Lavington'; a mechanical mouse with silk whiskers; a long-barrelled Colt with a bronco in relief on the plastic butt; a bazooka-like device designed to deliver a rapid succession of ping-pong balls; and a wide selection of plastic missiles from cornflakes packets.

  There was a hiss from the door. David turned to find Tony's head poking round it. The boy grinned with a mixture of excitement and confusion. The colour had seeped over his cheek-bones.

  'It, all right,' he said quickly. 'The Ghoul's got Hunter to do the river. He's a drip — but another of his friends. By the way, the Ghoul's not called the Ghoul really. He's Mr. Gould, so you'll know if you meet him.' Tony took a look over his shoulder. I've got to go now, so I'll see you after lunch. I didn't think you'd have the nerve to come to lunch!' 'Thank you,' David said gravely. 'You'd better hop it.'

  The boy seemed reluctant to go. He was looking at him oddly. But he nodded and disappeared.

  'Ah, Rogers!' I'm so sorry to keep you waiting.'

  David swung round and clasped the Reverend Jones' outstretched hand.

  'I expect you'd like to wash?'

  'Thank you.'

  Jones began moving towards the door with a crab-like motion. David kept step with him. Suddenly Jones stopped and looked at him searchingly. There could be no doubt about the sweetness of the smile David had caught lingering in the telephone receiver. Probably the reverend could drink lemon juice without sugar.

  'Do you know anything about cubbing?'

  David was relieved to be able to speak honestly. 'Well I was blooded and all that when I was about Tony's age, but it's a long time since I actually rode to hounds.'

  Jones was looking at him curiously. 'Dear me no, Rogers! Not blood sports. Wolf Cubbing.'

  David was beginning to feel he wasn't on the same plane as the people in this place. Perhaps he shouldn't have become Tony's brother after all.

  'Well, let me know what you think in your own time.' Jones resumed his motion towards the door.

  'About what?' David hazarded wildly.

  Jones stopped again. 'Merciful heavens, Rogers. I'm so sorry! I meant of course about your taking them on for us. It would only be two hours a week on Friday evenings – I think it's Friday evenings.'

  David frowned. He had the impression that wolf cubs divided their time between tying knots and sitting in a circle round Big Wolf (D. Rogers) yapping: Big Wolf (D. Rogers) had graciously to howl in return. But he was
sure he had told Jones that he was simply visiting Oxford, and not resident in the place. It's kind of you to ask me,' he managed to say. 'As you suggest, I should like a little time to think it over.'

  'Dear me, yes! Quite, quite.' Jones had clearly forgotten the subject, as too he'd evidently forgotten that David might like to wash. They had moved out into the hall, and through a pair of swing doors. Jones said:

  'Sit there, will you, Rogers, there's a good fellow.'

  David sat as bidden. He saw with horror that the room was full of choirboys. Jones had passed on through a further doorway and abandoned him.

  In fact he was sitting at the head of a long table looking down at a staring double row of some thirty curious faces. On his left was a similar table, with fewer boys and, hopelessly out of reach, a master, who anyway didn't seem to be wholly present. Still further away was a girl at a serving table with a lung spoon poised over some sort of cauldron; while at the other end of his own table was a man of evidently artisan class with large hands and a leather apron.

  David had observed just so much, and concluded that this must be a junior annexe to the dining hall into which Jones had passed, when he became aware of a small boy with a towel about his waist standing beside him and respectfully shifting his feet. Meanwhile the thirty pairs of eyes at the long table remained fixed on him. He raised his eyebrows to the small boy in the makeshift apron, who was evidently some sort of child-labour menial. The boy wiped his hands professionally on the towel.

  'Do you want a staff ordinary, or a staff small?'

  'You tell me?'

  92

  93

  'Well,' the boy appeared to consider, a staff ordinary bigger than an ordinary ordinary, and a staff small is bigger than an ordinary small. Or you can have an ordinary with a small of potatoes or something.'

  David's head reeled.

  'Mr. Robinson has a staff large,' the boy added helpfully. 'I think an ordinary ordinary, please.'

  The waiter boy departed, and David turned to the boy on his left. Unobtrusively, he indicated the big-handed man at the other end of the table, who if anything was looking more bewildered than himself. 'Who's that?'