Sandel

by Angus Stewart

  Tony lifted the dressing gown off his shoulders, then held his arms rigid at his sides so that it slipped dramatically to the floor. He stood in the emerald pool like a silver Venus.

  'How many are you going to take?'

  'Fifty or sixty I should think. See how we go.'

  'Sixty?'

  'Yep.'

  'Is it good colour?'

  David smiled and busied himself with the photo-floods. If he fused the whole house it would bring Sweeney up. 'Now, grab that Oxford Companion from the shelf, curl up on the mohair, and really read it.'

  Tony settled himself on the rug and began to read the Oxford Companion to Music. He looked up suddenly. 'Hey, David! It says here in a heading, "Choir Boys and Press Gang". And lower down it's got, "Choir Boys: ill treatment of", and, "Nineteenth Century neglect of!'

  'Better read it up. See what it says about midday meals. Does it mention St. Cecilia's particularly,'

  Tony looked up again; his lip hovering above his gum. Deliberately David pressed the cable release.

  David watched the image of the boy, brightly reflected on the ground-glass screen of the Rollei. Constantly he altered the angle of the camera and the lighting. Occasionally he attracted Tony's attention away from the book, sometimes altering the position of his head with his hand, similarly perhaps, though more gently, than Sweeney moving those of his clients in the chair.

  He clipped a supplementary lens on the camera and took just the boy's eyes from six inches. Curiously, with the magnifying screen down, he looked at his nose in profile. Its contours were of the kind plastic surgeons manufacture for fashion models. It occurred to David that by taking some careful elevations he might be able to sell blueprints and keep Tony in frog-flippers for life. There'd be pseudo-Sandel noses in Vogue for years.

  David felt the uneasy obsession of the art beginning to take hold of him. It was hot in the vicinity of the floodlights. He tore off his tie and rolled up his shirt-sleeves. He knew that he would come covertly to love each finally evolved picture. But they would be unreal. Tony couldn't be represented in black chemical stains on white paper, and it wouldn't be him he was loving at all. The photos could only be an empty security, not unlike that which he suspected the boy of deriving from his clothes. The morbidity of his attempts to retain Tony's image suddenly oppressed him. Yet the effort must be made.

  Tony hadn't noticed the several changes of film, but now he looked up.

  'Hallo!' David smiled his exhaustion.

  Peering out from the bright cage of light Tony seemed alarmed. 'You look like the Ghoul after he's rolled the cricket pitch!'

  'It's hot work. But I think you'll get a couple of sixes, any way. Now, forget about the book. I want more full faces.'

  'I'm hot too,' Tony announced a few minutes later. I'm going to undress so you can take me nude like a statue. Is it all right?'

  'If you want to. I'm about ready for a smoke-break.'

  'Find me a coat-hanger first, can you?'

  David obeyed, and then settled himself rather self-consciously in the semi-darkness which surrounded the floodlit area like an auditorium.

  Tony took off his jacket and arranged it carefully on the hanger. Removing his tie, he dragged pullover, shirt and vest over his ears together, folding them as a complex on the chair. Beneath the chair he moored the Cherry Blossom shoes like twin argosies, and after stripping off his socks, he smoothed them out with his hand until they were flat and two-dimensional like the curiosities David had suspected in Messrs. Ellistons' shop. Finally, despairing of the new shorts, he undid only the belt before wriggling out of them with extravagant movements of his hips and behind.

  'The butterfly emerges from its silken cocoon,' David said, as the boy folded his shorts over the hanger. It had been a small epic in its way. 'I sense a problem, though.'

  Tony pushed the clothes-laden chair away. 'What?'

  'I've no idea how to take nude photographs.'

  Tony sucked his lower lip into his mouth, and searched for pockets he hadn't got. Motivated by a similar perplexity David scratched his head. He moved the camera back.

  'I think you'd better just stand. Now, face me with your arms relaxed at your sides. Okay. Move your right foot forward a bit, and take your weight on your left leg. Look at the

  floor ... disinterestedly.'

  'I think this is right.' Tony was doubtful. 'Show me — the way you showed my head.'

  David moved the boy's right knee slightly.

  'Do you want to see the bruise on my behind the Ghoul made?'

  'For pity's sake, not now, Anyway, I thought we'd made a pact not to talk about the Ghoul.'

  'I know!' Tony cried. I'll hold a wine glass!'

  'You will not l' David said coldly. 'Stay balanced as you are, and relax.'

  As David returned to the camera the boy wilfully shrugged as shoulders. Then, in the moment when he released them, his whole body resolved itself into unconscious harmony. His eyes continued to brood on the floor. David made a second exposure without breathing.

  Steadily he concentrated on the Rollei; working with it in what had become a precise and accustomed rhythm. But it wasn't a happy or complete union, and never would be. For all that, he worked jealously with the camera's eye, becoming so absorbed with its narrow satisfaction that he had the sense of not having used his own. Tony seemed unconsciously to adapt himself to the camera's needs; changing his pose at will, or at a sign from David, though always maintaining within it an equilibrium that seemed founded on an almost blase exhibition of unknowing.

  The myopic monster must be sufficiently fed. David looked at the boy with his own eyes. He was anything but the skinny child Lang had chosen to envisage. The carriage of his head, and the careless stance, gave a profound harmony to his naked body whose beautifully modelled chest, smooth belly, and thin, flat pubis, were perfectly proportioned. The beauty was more compelling, perhaps more unreal as well, because of its obvious transience. His body had achieved strength and definition that was almost a linear severity after the formlessness of childhood. Its neatness hadn't yet suffered the imbalance and dislocation of adolescence.

  'Look a bit more malign.' David said. The camera might not be sufficiently fed after all.

  Tony scowled, thrusting his chin out. He became conscious of his pose, and its rhythm was spoiled.

  'I've a final idea.' David reached behind the wardrobe for a bamboo cane he kept for closing his upper windows, and tested its spring.

  'Oh Lord!' Tony sighed. This time there was no cause to admonish him. He said it with a resignation that was almost reverence.

  'Don't be an idiot, Tony!' For all his exhaustion David couldn't help laughing. I want you to bend it almost to breaking in your hands, and then across your shoulders.'

  The actions, as he had hoped, influenced the boy's entire stance, giving it harmony again.

  David pointed at the rug. 'We'll finish with Boy on a Bearskin. A tummy-sprawling Sandel kicking its legs.'

  When it was done David sank back exhausted in his armchair. Concentration, and the heat of the photo floods, had made the heaviness of the night more oppressive. His head swam. 'Get dressed, Tony bear. Private beaches are the proper place for bare Sandels. How do you spell the footwear sort? There should be another pun somewhere.'

  'With an a.' Tony said. He slithered into his shorts, fastening the snake-clasp belt, but leaving the flap of the waistband loose so that it hung down exposing its dark silk underside. Tony noticed it, and raised an admonitory finger to his nose. Never leave that undone when the Ghoul's around! He grabbed a boy by it once and his shorts ripped open. The Ghoul was frightfully embarrassed. Mine won't, though,' he added, tugging thoughtfully at the flap.

  'Just shut up about the Ghoul!' David buried his chin in his hand in an effort to control his anger.

  Tony slid the flap back on to its fastener. He walked slowly across the room, kicking out his bare feet before him as he had done on the day David observed him in the field. He t
railed his hand along the shelf of books like a child drawing a stick over park railings.

  'I can annoy you, can't I?' he said, when he had drifted back to where David was sitting. He eased himself over the arm of the chair on to David's knee. He showed no trace of his former embarrassment. David didn't attempt to push him away.

  Tony stretched out his bare arm and took a lemon from the bowl of fruit on the table. He held it above their heads aid appeared to consider it. He's a butterscotch boy in silver foil, David thought. Tony dropped the lemon deliberately into his own lap. David picked it up, then let it fall again. Tony waited for him to repeat the game. When he wouldn't, he twisted his body and pressed against David, burying his face in his neck. David found the lemon and held it under the boy's nose. Tony bit into it deeply and the saliva, flowing over his teeth like Niagara, ran along his silver wire, and fell in bright drops on his naked shoulder. David could taste the sharp juice on his lips.

  Tony suddenly drew away; bracing himself with his arms against David's shoulders.

  'You know what I said this afternoon? About boys being better than girls?'

  David nodded. He sensed that kind of rhetorical preparation that seeks permission to proceed.

  'Well ... there's something I don't understand ...' Tony Seemed momentarily at a loss; the challenge in his voice replaced by petulance. 'You know how people hug girls - films, for instance. Well. I don't see how they can hug them properly.' Tony brought the word out fiercely, as if, stumbling through puzzlement, aggression had presented itself as the only possibility of progress. 'I mean, don't their breasts get in the way?'

  David said nothing. There didn't appear to be anything he could say. But for Tony, the question itself seemed to have proved of sufficient release, and he no longer looked for an answer. He had begun to hug David properly.

  To David, the moment of happiness was precariously poised, as the beauty of Tony's nakedness seemed to have been, when he had stood before him on the floor. A sense of impending loss, of a possession that could have no perpetuity, threatened to obscure its fulfilment, stealing reality even from present awareness. His arms were locked about the boy, their every nerve exposed. Tony was polished walnut and soft wool. But he was a displaced part of David himself, that had mysteriously returned. He was whole. A dug-out canoe became a living tree again.

  'I've got to take you back to school?

  Tony made a contemptuous noise.

  David said nothing more. He was the wind's breast, and the boy's body a guttering candle flame. He was a moth, pressing against the ceaselessly shifting planes. His hands were cold. He held them against the flame. His palms were vibrant as drum skins. He squared his hands constantly to the hard facets of the wandering flame. But he could find nowhere to rest them.

  'Fainted tiger-meat,' Tony said, 'Bite somewhere. My nose just fits your eye.'

  Tony went wild. He beat furiously against David like a stranded fish determined to crush its life before the last air dies in its blood. Then he fell still.

  David's hand moved restlessly back and forth over the boy's ribs with the motion of a captive leopard. He pressed the butt of his palm against the tensely sprung cage.

  'Tony, I'm taking you back now,' David said. 'Home ... to school.' He lifted him on to his feet.

  They stared at each other, bewildered by the cruelty of interruption, because neither of them had willed it,

  Chapter 16

  The trouble with you,' Lang said, 'is that you evolve a comfortable epigram and then expect the world to live by it. It won't, you know.' He sat in his armchair and sipped port. 'What you're gaily saying in effect is that that choirboy is your mistress.'

  'Not yet,' said David. 'And anyway I think Tony would call it hugging.'

  'Nevertheless, you do, it seems, hop into bed with the child.'

  'Not yet I'm telling you! Can't you understand? We did nothing of the kind. What may happen tomorrow ... I don't know.'

  'Then you don't propose to set him up in a flat? Or perhaps stare into oases like Alfred Douglas with some painted Arab boy?'

  'Douglas was a bastard and a hypocrite, and Tony doesn't like paint.' David was confused. He wondered why he had come. The room was hot and there was a rumble of thunder outside. He looked at his watch. It was seven minutes past midnight, Even as he noted the time, a heavy drop of rain fell on the window Brize Norton had said something about rain a long time ago. Lang was still saying something.

  'Of course. I don't propose to turn you over. But if you must corrupt –'

  'Oh, don't be so bloody silly!' Some of the thunder was in David's head. 'I came here for friendship.' he said awkwardly. `What do I get? Wisecracks and platitudes. Have you no stones? Perhaps you'd feel better if you lit that censer.'

  He turned away and leant his forehead against the raised sash of the window. Lang always opened it when he arrived to let the smoke out. The rain was pouring down now. It flooded ever the pane, ran along the lip of the sash, and dripped on to the sill. David thought of the saliva running along Tony's silver wire when he bit into the lemon. He turned back into the room.

  'Can't I love without volunteering for Cavalry? I will, if you'd like to knock up a cross and a charge.'

  Masochism,' said Lang. 'And morbid self-pity as well.'

  'I agree. But then there's something inherently pathetic about having to justify loving.'

  'A cat purrs if you stroke it,' Lang said slowly. 'All young animals solicit cuddling. A boy, being a higher one, simply goes about that - to say nothing of inviting touching in exciting places - more subtly. He would just as much have enjoyed some mechanical device, or even this Ghoul creature, dropping that lemon.'

  'And being embraced by a ten-ton grab perhaps?'

  'No. My point is that, technically, the sexual act - and in whatever combination - is indulged for its lone pleasure's sake.'

  David clapped his hand to his brow. 'Oh, my God! Right! So what a miracle that he found sex with love first time!'

  Lang considered his crucifix. 'The argument so far seems to be that because there's a possibility of the child, indulging casual practices in the future you're justified in giving him what you fondly imagine to be a more complete relationship now? It's really very noble of you. Like making a clean haul of a bank to forestall anyone else, bungling it later on.'

  'Maybe.' David was uneasy.

  'Then why don't you admit that lust determined the incident earlier this evening, and jealousy the illogical rationalisation of it you're making now?'

  'You're asking me to justify an act of love, but without any reference to the mutual attraction of the lovers. I can't do it.... As to lust and bank robbery, they're the wrong words. Their connotations are seizure of advantage. The event wasn't like that at all.'

  'The boy seduced you, I suppose?'

  David smiled to himself, remembering. 'Nothing happened. And if it had ... it's neither here nor there. Besides, I can't admit seduction. Once again the term presupposes censure. What one does happens.'

  'And you're making a smug defence of the accident'

  'No.' David shook his head slowly. 'A bit vain, perhaps. But then some vanity is probably inevitable when one loves ... and finds oneself loved.'

  Lang stretched, and the gesture seemed to fill the room.

  'I'll concede that the boy has some sort of crush on you; even that you were justified in embracing him. Bed, though, would be a different matter. I've no doubt that psychologically your argument about the happy merger of love and sex is sound. However, in this instance, the psychology and morality are irreconcilable.'

  'With respect to your first point,' David mocked Lang's idiom gently, 'if you really see love in terms of bio-chemistry on the one hand, and the terminology of schoolgirl stories on the other, then I'm sorry for you. Nothing is more sickening than attempts to plant hedges between love and sexual passion. I don't blame you for that here. It isn't your fault. Something in the human mind takes care that other people's sex shall always be
inconceivable. We nervously acknowledge our fear of it whenever we make a dirty joke.'

  Lang had put his hand up. 'Can I just slip in that your irreverence before God bas a similarly nervous origin?'

  David bowed. Lang at once ceased to be a suppliant.

  'Which leaves the question of morality.'

  'I'll have port after all,' David said, getting up. 'I'm racing in the morning.'

  Lang waved a benign hand, but, surprisingly, the decanter didn't multiply. David helped himself liberally. Perhaps Lang would be able to replenish the draught with more concentrated prayer later on.

  'You're mad,' he said. 'You should be in bed – alone.'

  'You're impotent, Bruce.'

  'I beg your pardon?'

  'I said you're impotent ... and an old man. You and I are sitting in our cave in bearskins. There's Tony there too, and a neighbour-tribe concubine you've clobbered on the head and dragged in by the hair. All around there are fierce beasts and men out to get you.... Nasty things. I take Tony to my corner and ignore your presentation concubine. Not so good. No children. Very rightly you equate no children with death. There'll be no one to protect you in your old age from the things outside. What do you do? You impress upon anyone you can - it's not difficult - that such deviationist behaviour is deuced awkward; wrong; very evil - in that order. They hand the dark secret down the generations and we have conventional morality. You've initiated what's virtually become a conditioned reflex.'

  So murder is harmless too? It just weakens the efficiency of the tribe a bit?'

  'No. There are two distinct kinds of morality'

  Lang groaned. 'Of which one is Rogers' morality of personal convenience, I don't doubt.'

  'No. Yours' David said. 'Your morality of convenience and convention. Plenty of illegitimacy in the cave in one age; bigamy in another, and so on. Then there is the other –and only real morality - whose definition depends upon harm done to somebody else. Obviously murder is censurable. Both the victim and anyone near to him suffer. Making love to Tony on the other hand is not censurable, if only because I know it is not hurtful. As I say, it'd almost certainly be beneficial.'