Sandel

by Angus Stewart

  David smiled faintly. 'What about this bat?' he said, as Tony began toying with the roll of rubber again. 'What do you want a new grip for anyway? The bat itself looks practically brand new.'

  Tony was indignant. 'It's two seasons old; I want to put it away for the winter.'

  David couldn't help a smile spreading across his face. 'There's hardly a single ball-mark on the blade.'

  'Well, I hardly ever hit them!' Tony was now smiling happily back.

  'Swordsmanship might prove to be your natural sport,' David suggested.

  The boy looked away. With a terrific effort he got the rubber ring over the end of the bat handle only to have it spring back into his hands. David felt uncomfortable. He stared into the bright, honeycomb elements of the gas fire; then he took the resolution.

  'Tones ... can you look me in the eyes and say this isn't some sort of mildly animal demonstration,'

  'No,' the boy said, without raising his head. 'But I can always look you in the eyes when I want to'

  Then for heaven's sake put the bat away and I'll see what I can do with it later!' David was exasperated.

  Tony, face became animated as he looked up again. 'I want you to smell it first.'

  'Smell it?'

  'The linseed oil,' Tony explained. He stood up; then sat down quickly again. 'Can't have them hanging skew because of that.'

  'God's sake! You're winning,' David said, bitterly almost. 'You're winning.' But he went to the bed.

  'Now!' Tony exclaimed triumphantly. He reached out carefully with the bat; laying the tip of the cool blade against David's cheek. Then, squaring the blade, he laid it flat against his chest, following every movement with his eyes. It came obscurely to David that he was being tested for radio-activity with a geiger counter.

  Tony's face was slightly flushed. His loosely sheathed body had the shadow of old pewter. It became brightly polished when he stooped through the white beam of the reading-lamp. He slid the bat under the bed and kissed David. 'Bardot,' he said without much conviction.

  David stood back not knowing where the travesty ended and reality began, or what the travesty might be designed to conceal. He looked for words; but the task was impossible. One might as well transpose Beethoven for typewriter. But there was no need for words, because love was a synthetic transmission like music.

  He was watching the slow-motion film again. This time there was no fury in the boy's face. Tony turned off the reading lamp. He lay back. Like the Mayan on the stone he looked for release into immortality. But it was David who must use the knife, and as priest it was his faith, the lead part, which discovered doubt. When he did obey it was with the aggression of spoiled confidence. He saw Tony pull off one of his shoes. Then he had thrown it at the ceiling light and there was broken glass falling into the room.

  'They sew them specially strong on boys' things,' Tony gasped, letting David's hand alone, and licensing the violence of its downstroke. David was enraged and his hand continued down with sudden madness to tear cloth now. Tony's disbelief convulsed his whole body. He was twice naked. Fantasy had hidden from him that truth may be unpredictable, a wilderness. He was lost and quite alone there before he discovered its freedom.

  David had passed through hatred, and was equally confused by its aftermath. For an instant his teeth had touched the boy's shoulder. Then he had snatched them away, and it was his own forearm that was bruised.

  After that, tentatively, they came together. Their individual peace, selfish, jealous and sovereign, they found could he one. An equally strange but deeper peace possessed and bound, them. The sweet water had passed beyond protest to blend with the salt.

  Nearly asleep, David gave expression to the idea. 'We're like the Otter and your sea.'

  'Where I threw my clothes away?'

  'I didn't think of that.' Could the boy have read his unconscious? But even Tony's intuitive moment couldn't raise David far from the threshold of sleep. 'Which of us is which?'

  'I'm the Otter,' Tony said practically. 'I'm smaller. Then coming to you is only coming home.'

  'I wonder ...' Doubt, perhaps, tilted David into the security of sleep.

  'Yes! Your bed is the sea bed!' Tony's excitement woke him.

  'Okay! Then I'm embracing you, slight stream. You cease to meander and forfeit your babbling sound. Lose your identity just now at least and ... be still, Tones ... The tide's full, and the sea's asleep ...'

  The dawn couldn't penetrate the curtain. Instead, it tumbled beneath it in radiating shafts, and spread out across the floor to be reflected by the myriad, pearl-like fragments of the shattered light bulb.

  David picked his way carefully over the carpet and turned the fire on. He smiled faintly as he remembered an idiotic impression of the night before that Tony was going to ask for a coat-hanger. Now he collected the boy's clothes from the floor and laid them on a chair in front of the fire.

  Tony opened his eyes. 'I was only pretending to be asleep! When do we have to get up?'

  'About an hour.'

  Tony turned on his stomach and lay with his head on his arm. He brought his lips to the back of his hand and blew through them vibrantly, purring like a cat. 'All quick like a rubber-band plane.' he said. 'Does it look like a long trousers day?'

  'You have odd waking though.'

  'Put them to warm, anyway,' Tony said.

  David did so; then settled on the edge of the bed in his dressing-gown. 'Tones, where did you come from?'

  The boy shifted his head on his arm. 'A long way away,' he said. 'From a magic place.'

  'Tell me.'

  'A shore, I think.' Tony seemed to be remembering. 'Perhaps it was an island. Anyway there was sand and it was bright yellow.'

  'What did you do there?'

  Tony turned to look at David. 'That's where I lived. Under a very tall tree. A special sort. It was called a Storm Tree. Then there was the sea, too, which was blue, and some ordinary green palm trees. But the Storm Tree was my tree. It always safe there ... If you were near enough to touch it. It had bright things high up in the branch sometimes. They were babyish, sweet things, like glace cherries and angelica and something that was silver. I don't think they mattered much though ... And anyway they weren't always there ... or else you just couldn't see them.'

  'Were there any people?'

  Tony was sucking his forearm, and had made a scarlet patch on the skin. He shook his head. 'Just me.'

  'Were you lonely?'

  'No, never.'

  The room was getting warmer, and Tony sat up, resting on his elbow. 'You needn't believe me if you don't want to,' he added confusedly.

  'I'm sorry,' David said. 'Tell me what you were like. What did you wear?'

  Tony thought for a moment. 'It's hard to remember. Clothes. No ... nothing. Because I remember piling the sand on my knees and feeling how warm it was. Sometimes I felt I had glass feet ... You could see the flowers through them where there was grass. I don't know what sort they were. Quite often you could hear music in the Tree.'

  'What kind of music?'

  'Wind music. And the noise the sea made on the beach. It was real music ... Only it wasn't ...' Tony puckered his brow. 'It was certainly harmonised. I think someone must have done it specially for me.' He smiled archly.

  'Oh, and I had a red boat I used to row about in,' Tony said suddenly. 'And lobster pots which I let down into the sea. There were pineapples on a row of bushes above the beach.' Leaning over, Tony moved his head from side to side; trying to tickle David's chest with his hair. 'It's a secret though ... Where I lived,' he said.

  Tony became restless; bouncing on the bed. 'I hate you, you know. Rogers.' he said after a moment. 'You're very rude to me sometimes. You don't like me enough. I think I'll have to organise you better.'

  David smiled at the ceiling. 'What'll that involve?'

  Tony didn't answer; but began punching him at close quarters.

  'I think I can guess,' David went on, catching hold of his wrists. 'Violent ambiva
lence.'

  Tony struggled to free himself, the colour mounting in his face. 'What does that mean?'

  David laughed.

  'Tell me!' Tony demanded, butting fiercely with his head.

  'No.'

  'Right! I'll jump on you, Tony announced simply. 'No, on second thoughts, I think I'll just snooze a bit.'

  He sank back on the pillow. David released his wrists. Tony was on top of him in an instant; kneeling on his stomach, and pinning his shoulders down.

  'David, what does that word mean?' He began brutally bouncing on his knees, while his eyes searched David's for the first signs of weakening.

  David shook his head solemnly between gasps. Tony landed with particular violence; then, parting his knees, he collapsed on top of David like a crumpled paper-bag. At the same time he drew the sheet over both their heads; pouncing with it like a giant butterfly net.

  'Sandel has got you, I think,' he said in the yellow twilight. 'You can't beat me just because you have more words.'

  'Tones - for heaven's sake - we're not at war, you and I.'

  'That depends on your behaviour,' Tony said.

  Still in the opaque world beneath the sheet, Tony cupped his hands about his eyes trying to create a pool of deeper darkness in which to read the luminous figures on David's watch. 'Stop shaking or I can't see!' he demanded unreasonably. David could feel his concentrated breath stirring the fine hairs on his wrist.

  'Still!' Tony said indignantly. 'I've got it .. . Twenty-five to eight. I'd better get up and collect our morning tea.' Tony crawled to the end of the bed, drawing the sheet with his teeth like a puppy. David sat up. The room wasn't as warm as he'd supposed.

  'I don't want you to fall asleep again,' Tony explained. He tore the sheet right off to make sure, then knelt on the end of the bed, laughing, and with his hands clasped between his knees. Suddenly he was back with a shallow dive. David caught him.

  'Rogers, ... B-bully ' Tony protested. 'You're hugging me in two.'

  'Godes bones!

  It's semi-Tones!

  And calls for diatonic!'

  David released him.

  'D.i.r.e. t.o.n.i.c, I suppose. Witty,' Tony said, panting. 'You're madder than Schumann.'

  Inwardly David checked. Bruce, he thought.

  Tony filled his lungs threateningly. 'Shall I do a bit of Frauenliebe und Leben?'

  'No!' David made a grab to cover his mouth. 'Spare me lieder in bed.'

  'Leda wouldn't have you in bed,' Tony said. 'Only swans.' Even at its smuggest his smile was tolerable. Imperiously, he elbowed David in the ribs. 'Rogers, I've been thinking. With you schizoid as Schumann, and me brilliant without complications

  'Yes, Tonimus.'

  'Shut up ... without complications, we ought to ...'

  'Tonimus.'

  '... to find the pun about Sandels sandals. But I'm more concerned,' Tony still breathed heavily, his new concentration becoming fierce, 'about those cathedral drips - Christ Church. Some of them have started to wear shorts and suits of that greasy, drab man-made fibre stuff. The rot has set in. It lowers the tone of the university.'

  Profoundly David nodded. 'The Times, Tonimus.'

  'Yes, I will write.' Tony reached out for his superior shorts. 'I'll expect a cheque for these.' He held up the rent flannel. 'Or d'you want me to ask Miss Poole to mend them?'

  'The boiler,' David said.

  'They'd never mend well enough to wear,' Tony said, grudgingly.

  David was irritated. 'You must bloody well learn to lose some things sometimes, you vain nit.'

  'If they were sewn up you could do it again.'

  'And if you consciously prepare for that sort of contingency you're revolting - and I opt out.'

  'Oh, so? Ho-hum!'

  They were silent for some moments.

  'The glass,' David said. 'Put my slippers on your feet.'

  Chapter 27

  Somehow the school worked. Behind the functioning of the choir, whose members marched out two or even three times daily, the school carried on with an improvisation that was only a little less competent than David's jazz band. Education happened. David, moving from class to class largely as the muddled head of Jones directed him, went with it. 'Ex and ducere, Rogers,' Tony said to him one day. 'It means to lead out. Your job is to capture the imagination of those drips. There's not much hope for them ... but you'd better get on with it.' 'Prig,' David said: but he proceeded to lead out with enlightenment. The problem was what to do with the precipitate. Mediaeval noblemen, he learnt from a contemporary of Hunter's, wore soft leather bots with clocks on top of them; while von Manz, after some desperate concentration with a dictionary, informed him that Mercedes had good engines, but the Rolls-Royce the better carcass, Well, why not? As it stood the English language dealt dully with inanimate bodies. From one of the smallest boys he discovered that Oliver Twist was the creation of Dick Chickens.

  At the beginning of the second week of term Tony announced his resignation from the choir. The move was accomplished by the simple expedient of calling upon the college organist Sir Vernon Bull and explaining to the astonished man that he proposed to choose his own time for going out to pasture, and that though there was as yet no necessity, he

  felt it would better suit his dignity to do so now. Imagining the scene later, David suspected it must have been a speech not unlike General McArthur's. When pressed, Tony had a. apparently confessed that he had a secondary motive, which was to devote himself entirely to recording a work of a fellow Academician, Sir David Rogers.

  The truth, David realised, was that the boy was terrified of losing control of his voice suddenly. In fact he never did. His voice, which had always been a freak, slipped half an octave without falter; while its last moments remained true.

  Meanwhile Tony officially retired; the opera cloak, which he had chosen to consider his own, going to join the best grey suit in its polythene wardrobe bag. He made it quite clear, however, that he would continue to hold more than nominal control over the choir, as well as the school. Among other official functions he would certainly preside on November the 22nd, which was St. Cecilia's Day, when, by a long established tradition, the choir held a beano behind locked doors at High Table, while any resident dons made do with a sandwich in Common Room. In addition, he intimated to the appropriate quarters that he would expect the gold replica of the senior chorister's cup for the second year running; the two plucked capons, half-score of lampreys, and five crowns, which were now a personal cheque, from the Steward; and the boxed-games of Snakes and Ladders and Ludo from the Friends.

  As David had expected, Tony's attitude towards himself was at times oddly ambivalent. His egocentricity was still that of a child; but was compensated for by a precocious tenderness which he carried to lyric extremes. The calculated assertions of Sandel in the first two weeks of Lent were innumerable, and David found them exhausting. Invariably, though, they were followed by counter demonstrations designed to redress the balance of relationship, so that David, remaining largely passive, had the impression that he was being tempered like a piece of steel. At least he seemed alternately to be plunged into hot and cold waters; or perhaps, as Tony put it, he was being 'organised'. The demonstrations were mostly simple, and their true intensity hidden from an outsider.

  A typical instance was the business of the light bulb. Tony, straying into the staff room when David was alone there, found a burnt-out bulb on the mantelpiece. He threw it, David caught it, and the game continued for some minutes until, inevitably, the boy turned his back and strolled out of the door leaving the bulb suspended briefly in mid-air. It hit the floor, like a royal salute, as Mrs. Jones walked into the room.

  The counter demonstration to this incident was likewise typical of many more. While David was talking to a visiting clergyman later that morning in the break, Tony appeared in the staff room, dragged David's shoes from his feet without explanation, and returned to replace them brightly polished just before the bell went.


  Other demonstrations took place in class. For some reason the top form was reading Hamlet. Tony announced that he proposed to take the part of the Ghost's aide-de-camp. David protested, scanning the table of Dramatis Personae in vain, whereupon Tony became indignant. The Marshal, sir, he explained patiently; and turned up the relevant line. Of course there it was:

  Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour,

  With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.

  After this he developed a strained facility for punning. There was Theseus' lover's reduced mobility in the Labyrinth: 'Sir, 'Arry 'ad knee trouble'; and brain-child of the same occasion, the proposed 'Mini-minor tour of Crete'.

  Related to the same freak of mind was the episode of von Manz and the fire-lighting; a task the boys performed by rota. 'Sir, please,' the Austrian asked, turning from an impressive wigwam of paper and sticks, 'have you fire for me?' Tony was on to the idiom at once. 'Mr. Rogers,' he insisted flamboyantly, 'only has fire for me.' Then, unable to contain himself, he elaborated in German that was fortunately beyond anyone else in the form room, and finished by producing his own box of matches which he kept for the purpose of lighting David's cigarettes.

  In these, and a thousand other ways, which included such diverse things as the drafting of cryptic inscriptions and pathetic saucers of stolen chocolate biscuits or meat-paste pots

  of flowers placed by David's bedside, Tony emphasised his presence, having recourse to a repertoire of provocations whose intensity was the greater or the lesser as opportunity and his mood prompted him. At night he flung away the childish arms, which were the tools of aggression or endearment in his waking hours. Often they had been assumed with an eye to the public gallery, and so could be abandoned when the two of them were alone together.

  Tony's intolerance grew to cover all aspects of the school, which he had taken to terming 'this mediaeval institution'.

  David watched the process with apprehension, curbing its wilder manifestations wherever he could. The most obvious target was Mrs. Jones, and Tony began crossing her path with more frequency than was comfortable. The truth, as David defined it to himself, was that the boy had grown out of the school. With his scholarship secured, and his responsibilities in the choir ended, he was at a loss for constructive interests. But more than this, Tony saw himself for the lover he was; as someone entering a new dimension of life. He was jealous of the environment he had outgrown, and of the cardboard conventions that crowded in upon him. He turned at bay, kicking out savagely to knock them down. In an attempt to channel some of the boy's energy David increased his music lessons, Tony made good progress.