Sandel

by Angus Stewart

  There's a more professional concert in Exeter soon. The one here was local, you know. There probably won't be talks and drippy flowers in Exeter. I am in demand! Ho-hum!

  David, I'm writing this on top of a cliff here. There is a liner I think going past, but it's too far away to see its name or how many funnels it's got. I don't know why I did something funny. I hope you won't be offended or anything, but I don't think you will. I rolled the other new suit into a ball with stones in and dropped it into the sea. I think I did it because of what you said about worrying. I've got some old cotton shorts on which are dirty but I don't mind. I've got very brown so I think you would like me! I can't be bare be

  cause we aren't allowed to be here. I've got my sandals off though. I've still got the other best suit, only just for concerts.

  Near here there's a stream that rues into the sea. It's called the Otter. I thought I'd tell you because I know you like the names of streams. You can drink the water high up. If you follow it down through the bracken to the sea and taste it every hundred steps you can feel it getting saltier on your tongue. Then it is the sea.

  David - I don't know why I go on saying 'David' like that: I hope you don't think I'm a drip. David, I haven't any friends here and sometimes I'm horribly bored. There's only a boy of my age. He keeps on wanting to play silly games and follows me round. I don't like that so I just walk away. I said he was filthy and I'd tell his mother. (Of course I wouldn't have though.) That settled him! He bought me a choc-ice. I put it down his neck. He has very ugly clothes - terylene. Sorry!'

  I'm quite looking forward to next term and also I'm not. It's hard to explain. I feel I've grown out of it. The place irritates me. Mrs. Jones specially is fussy in a stupid way. Anyhow I'll be able to see you often and I have to go back for the extra term because old Bull wants me. Most of the work will be in the early part of the term. We've got some record to make for the Argo company then too. Kings are all right in that flowery way, you know, but we've got more 'guts there'. That's confidential! The man who was at our concert here told me. Oh the man wants to buy just me for one, and have a picture on the sleeve. I said I must ask my aunt and you first.

  I've got to go now. The grass is boiling hot and there are midges and the liner has gone. I'm going to put two fourpenny stamps on this so they'll feel it's important and you'll get it.

  Lots Of Love, Tony. XO

  P.S. Have you done your photos yet? Perhaps we could have one of the ones of me as a statue on the record sleeve. No, I suppose we couldn't!

  Love, T.

  David folded the letter back into its envelope and stared at the deserted flying trapeze above his head. It was dark outside and there was nothing else to look at. His eyes caught the scar his plaster heel had made when he'd kicked the wall and he wanted suddenly to apologise to the occupant of the room next door.

  Lang carried in the phone as Mekin might have done if asked to handle such a device. Evidently though, Lang's distrust had a less dignified cause.

  'This,' he announced, untangling himself from yards of flex, 'could prove my undoing, with your death making for the actual indictment. You'll make a maximum of two unemotional calls of such duration only as is strictly needful, and I myself must have left the sanatorium within fifteen minutes. Meanwhile the entire British Medical Council is strategically disposed throughout the garden and each of its members armed with a copy of the Hippocratic Oath.'

  Lang paused, and David looked at him dryly.

  'You know, Bruce, I've been listening to a child ... a boy ... who derives more unselfconscious sense from monosyllables than you could hope to convey after a five year course at a school of Subversive Oratory. What's more, his effects aren't obtained like clotted cream - that's to say he doesn't wander round a garden with a verbal simmering-pan coagulating rhetorical fats. Even if he did, he wouldn't at a time when someone was waiting for a telephone which only be could bring. Now give!'

  Lang raised his eyebrows, and still withheld the telephone. When he opened his mouth David could sec that something big was coming.

  'Believe me, David, I should be the first to uphold the superior accomplishment of innocence. But I fail to see how you may be said to have upheld the innocent state of the said choirboy Hildebrand Kirtle, or whatever his name is. Your pose is hypocritical.'

  Lang shot out the last word with unprecedented simplicity. Somewhere a temple screen had probably split in two.

  'The name's Tony Sandel, as you well know,' David said.

  He was feeling more than a little weary. 'As to innocence, we have different conceptions of it. To me innocence is right-standing in relation to truth. I hate whatever offends against it. I hate illusions. Life is like one of those fields in Normandy which the Germans were afraid the allies might land paratroops and gliders in. So what did they do? They painted obstructions on canvas where really there was nothing but an open field. The allies lacked the nerve to make a landfall. If they had they might have brought liberation where it was thinkable before.'

  'And who in this colourful panegyric arc the Germans?'

  'Not just convention. Convention's often right. But blind adherence to a convention that mayn't be questioned if only because the act of questioning would itself offend the convention. Incidentally, by "convention" I don't specifically mean conventional morality - as you might be tempted to suppose.'

  'Oh?' Lang had raised his eyebrows, which were rather like suburban doormats. The telephone was still out of reach.

  'No. A whole colony of self-delusions - amongst which I'd number some of the gambits of Rome. Though not the basic idea, maybe,' David added.

  'Basic idea!' Lang threw up the suburban doormats to heaven for spring-cleaning.

  David exploited the confusion by grabbing the telephone. It wasn't plugged in.

  'As with all your emotional philosophies. David, you fail to deduce a convincing conclusion.' Lang had carefully re-aligned his eyebrows in their customary place. 'You implied a moment ago that you hadn't betrayed your innocence because you hadn't offended your truth. What causes you suppose that the boy's innocence isn't spoiled,'

  David abandoned the attempt to hold his head on the pillow. 'Neither Sandel nor I were aware of any ugliness ... far from it. We were drawn together without thought. We landed in one of those fields that had been dishonestly disguised. So far neither of us has been disappointed with what we found there.'

  Lang had given a shrug. The shrug, perhaps, of a minor fisher of Galilee who had caught another net-full of empty water. Neither of them spoke. David lay back exhausted. Cold spread over his body like a tide. Once - perhaps many times before - his own words had failed to leave his ears. He looked steadily at the scaffolding. For an instant terror hung over him quite as menacingly as ever it had done in the form of the music-room ceiling at home. When he spoke again it was uncertainly.

  'Underneath the words... what's real? Am I living a lie? So many odd things can become precious to a man ... and he fanatical about them. You know - a dry-fly fisherman, say who thinks the world, insane. Could I be on a hobby-horse too? If I am, what about Tony ..."

  Lang had got up. 'You're one of Nature's trapped poets, David. A mad one. I think.'

  Startled by the directness, David looked at him quickly. Then he saw that the telephone was plugged in. 'Now, wait a minute!' he said. 'There's no doubt you've a facade. What's the mystery beneath it?'

  'You're impossible,' Lang said.

  Chapter 20

  The Medical Council were showing considerable restraint. So far they had failed to erupt through the french window, nor indeed had there been any other disturbance, though Lang had already outstayed his fifteen minutes' grace.

  David asked the hospital switchboard for the Budleigh Salterton number. His stomach was taut. Lang, he noticed, was frowning, and he raised his eyebrows to learn more. Lang took the cue.

  'I'm just wondering what this aunt or whatever is going to think when a strange man rings up asking for her pretty w
ard'

  David said nothing. The line had gone dead. Suddenly a female voice reached into his ear. It was like a tremolo heartily sustained on an oboe.

  'Prudence Laying. Yes?'

  'Miss Laying, my name's ...'

  'Yes, David; I know.'

  'Yes, I'm ringing ...'

  'From the hospital; they told me.'

  'Why, yes . . .' David cast a helpless glance at Lang, who had drawn nearer. 'Miss Laying, I wonder whether I might ...'

  'Ant is in London for the day.'

  'Ant?' Someone had dried up David's mouth with a flame-thrower.

  'Antony. My nephew!'

  'Oh, of course! Forgive me ...'

  'Now, just a moment, young man. The oboe had gone into a firm andante. 'The operator told me the call was coming from the hospital. Is that right?'

  'Yes. I'm ...'

  'Very well then. In that case I must first speak to your doctor, as I have quite a lot to say to you.'

  Throughout the conversation Lang had been listening in with his neck strained towards the receiver. Now he suddenly slapped his hand over the mouthpiece. David looked at him in bewilderment.

  'Lie! For God's sake lie, man!' Lang hissed.

  David stared at him stupidly. Then the reason for Lang's alarm dawned on him. At the same time the shock of witnessing so complete a volte-face in Lang seemed to have lubricated his mouth. He looked quickly at the receiver, which Lang still held muffled.

  'To meet melodrama with kind, boyo, I may lie to find Tony; but to deny him, never. You've got the wrong station for triple cock-crows - so desist - for Pete's sake!'

  The exchange had lasted only seconds. With a shrug Lang deferred the situation to higher authority, and abandoned the receiver to David.

  'I'm sorry,' David spoke again into the black bowl. 'I was interrupted. No, I'm quite well enough to talk. All I wanted was to let Tony know I'm all right. I haven't been able to answer his letters because I was involved in an accident. In fact I've been unconscious for ten weeks.'

  'That's extraordinary, and most unfortunate! I do hope you'll be better very soon. But I think you've already answered the challenge I had to put to you.'

  'Challenge?' David glanced at Lang, who was struggling like Deiphobe endeavouring to rid herself of the possession of Phoebus.

  'Yes. About the nature of your relationship with Antony.'

  Phoebus had got the better of Lang. He was visibly breaking up.

  'Now, tell me,' Miss Laying's voice continued, 'do you intend to go on seeing my nephew?'

  'Why, yes!'

  'Good. That's settled then. You had better keep up this half-brother pretence'

  David swallowed.

  'There's no need to prevaricate, David.' Miss Laying must have ears like a bat. Possibly her eyes could track sputniks in daylight. 'I was most intrigued when Mrs. Jones rang up to say that Antony wouldn't be needing a new suit because his brother had turned up unexpectedly and bought him two! I had the impression that Mrs. Jones was not only going out of her way, but that she doubted Antony had a brother.'

  'Then you ...'

  'I concluded that anyone whom Ant had persuaded to indulge his vanity must have discovered a, mutually happy relationship with him.'

  'Then what did you tell her?'

  'Tell her? I told her that I should not expect to find the cost of the telephone call on my bill!'

  David let his head roll on the pillow. His mouth gaped at the ceiling. The only infringement of the morality he had outlined to Lang had been his involving Tony in one lie - the brother pose. Since no one could deny the right of this Laying to summarily elect brothers, or to ordain anything else for that matter, he was absolved from his only sin. Lang was sunk in meditation on the tail of his bed. David was startled from his own vacancy by another injunction from Budleigh.

  'Don't trust her! That woman's stupid, as you'll discover if you meet her.'

  'I only caught a glimpse of her when I was at the school.

  'What did you think of her,' Miss Laying shot the question.

  'I don't know; she didn't speak to me. She looked like a brief stack of doughnuts. Sort of dumpy.' David bad been steadily warming to Miss Laying. Now he was finding words. The conditions of human communication were odd. 'Tony, I know, regards her as something of a dark presence. I don't think he's quite clear why he does though.'

  'No children for one thing.' Miss Laying was positive. What do you think of the Ghoul?'

  'The ...?'

  'The Ghoul, David. Gould!'

  'Oh! A sad man, I think.'

  There was a snort in David, ear, like a rogue elephant wondering in which direction to charge. It didn't ponder long.

  'He's perverse! Ties boys up.'

  'Ties ...?'

  'Ropes the Wolf Cubs to trees to demonstrate reef-knots.

  David tried to envisage Hunter bound to a tree. It didn't seem quite right somehow.

  'Anyway, he's left.'

  'Retired?'

  'Yes. Great Scott, though! I'm talking backwards. I've told Jones to offer you the post if you want it. He seems to have been most impressed by you.'

  'There was some crazy suggestion the moment I stepped into the building,' David said slowly. 'As a matter of fact I'm now free ...'

  'Then accept it. You might make Ant's last term at that dreadful little school human. Anyway, I'll tell him you're safe as soon as he gets back, and explain why you were unable to write. Whatever you decide, take care of him.'

  'I'll do my best,' David said, and put the receiver down.

  Then it occurred to him that neither the astonishing Prudence nor himself had said goodbye. Well, sometimes people didn't.

  Lang was only partially restored. The spiritual dilemma looked like being a long one. At any rate it engrossed him entirely, for when David phoned Jones, and promised to confirm his intention of filling the post vacated by the Ghoul in writing, Lang made no protest beyond a symbolic tearing of his hair.

  Now David was able to relax. Conceivably his comfort lay in once more becoming officially, if remotely, connected with the body corporate of St. Cecilia. But then, conceivably again, perhaps it did not. Either way, the job would be more honest than others open to disgraced St. Cecilia's men. He might well, for instance, become rent collector for her many scattered slum lands; or even the incumbent of one of the cosier livings she owned.

  Lang had risen from the foot of the bed. 'You know, David, your condition is still what the bulletins would call critical.' My own diagnosis is that your brain's suffered more damage than was at first supposed. It always flirted with the lunatic fringe, but now it would appear to have completely succumbed. The last half-hour hasn't been a happy time for a friend to have to have witnessed. I'm going, but I'll have a few words with your nurse on my way out.'

  David waved his arms. 'No, stop! There's a lot of things I still want to know.'

  'Like what?' Lang was expansive. For all the new pose, which was clearly a temporary defence flung up to prepare the party line, he was visibly cheered. Perhaps by the knowledge that Miss Laying wasn't searching the attic for a horse-whip.

  'Like what the hell you're doing in Oxford in the vacation, for one thing?'

  Lang inclined his head.

  'I thought as much. Your brother's keeper. Well, what about the car?'

  'I eventually sold it to a motor fiend with black fingernails and pebble-lenses who was apparently on the spot with spanners within seconds of your crash. Your engine, it seems, was a "sweetly-blown 100E with a genius valve job" – did you know that?'

  David laughed.

  'The proceeds,' Lang went on, 'I burned. Fifty candles, distributed for modesty's sake between The Chaplaincy, Campion Hall. Greyfriars and St. Bennets, and dedicated in equal division to the salvation of your own soul and that of that that wretched small boy. There was exactly two shillings and six‑pence remaining from the total balance of two pounds ten, which I expended on this Penguin edition of Thomas A Kempis.'


  Lang produced a Penguin Classic bordered with sacramental purple. David bowed as best he might as he accepted the gift. There was something touching about the thought of twenty-five candles burning for Tony with bright daggers of flame.

  'So the Series 4 was written off. What about me?'

  Lang made the transformation to a temporal physician whose attentions were conscientious, if reluctant, because necessarily mundane. He pulled what is called a long face.

  'Initially, I understand, there was subdural haemorrhage, which meant boring a hole in your skull and draining it discreetly like a coconut. That's where I am afraid they may have evacuated too much — or, again perhaps, too little.'

  David began tentatively exploring his skull.

  'Oh, you won't find it there now.' Lang was reassuring. 'It will have healed; despite the remarkable thickness of your skull. So odd that, by the way, that they took photographs and measurements.'

  'Oh'

  'After that,' Lang spread his hands, 'severe concussion continued until a few days ago. Previously, though, you seemed nearer consciousness on several occasions.'

  'And that's when you called in the Jesuits.'

  'Yes.'

  "Tell me no more.'

  'All right.' Lang was surprised. 'As regards bones, though, you only had a cracked left hip, and a fairly nasty complex fracture of your right leg.' He indicated David's humiliated member. 'Bone protruded indecently from your trousers.'

  David regarded the plaster sourly. At least the Jesuits didn't appear to have written their initials on it. 'And what date do you calculate for the Resurrection?'

  Lang looked wary.

  'Come along, Bruce! When comes promised time? When do I stand erect again?'