Sandel

by Angus Stewart

  'So?'

  'Nothing . . just they don't hang right in front.'

  'It'll be quite a. day when such finer aesthetic considerations halt progress,' David said after a while, because the boy seemed to have gone into sulks at the idea.

  'Actually, I bought six new pairs yesterday,' Tony said, looking away. 'Three with, and three ordinary.'

  'Six!' To have torn his hair David would have had to jeopardise their safety.

  Tony brightened again. 'We're escaping!'

  'Thanks to your folly.'

  Tony turned to look at him. 'You don't sound very enthusiastic!'

  'Oh, I am. We've rather been tumbled into it though. I've hardly had time to think.'

  'But we're getting away! Isn't that all that matters?'

  'Yes, I think it may be. At least it's the first step. And the right one.'

  'No more rules!' Tony began to bounce and the car swayed. He subsided again: counting off his fingers. 'Let's see- no more school, choice of food, statues, large sand castles, white shorts all day, and no comments, if I feel like it .. . then, where were we ... no insults from newspapers, and of course breakfast in bed, because after all I am practically a millionaire

  David laughed. 'Okay! But everywhere life has to have some rules.'

  'Not the old ones,' Tony said. Adopting a former trick, he slid down the seat on to his shoulders. David reached out compulsively and squeezed his stomach. Tony had evidently been hoarding a new pullover to go with the ultimate outfit. Quietening, he said: 'I don't think I'm ever going to read a newspaper again.'

  David continued playfully bullying handfuls of wool and surprisingly the boy made no protest. Then he saw that Tony was far away. The shadow of the incident with the press still hung over him.

  'We must find a good beach - perhaps we can find a private one.' Tony said. 'Then we might find the pun about bear and bare and Sandel and sandals -- remember?'

  'Now wait a minute! We're going to a Catholic country, you know! Perfect decorum.'

  'Like Bruce's?'

  'I hope not! That's something quite peculiar.'

  'You'll miss him, won't you?' Tony said.

  David looked at him quickly. 'Yes ...I will.'

  'D'you know what he said to me the other day at lunch?'

  'What was that,'

  'He said to look after you because you were a bit crazy, and not really sinful.'

  'Did he indeed! Darned handsome of him!'

  Tony laughed. 'You know, I once built a huge sand castle at Budleigh - near the Otter ... you know about that. It was supposed to last a year ... But the sea got it after all. So in Italy we'll build one above the tideline.'

  'No problem,' David said. 'The Mediterranean has no tide.'

  'Really? Then we are going to the right place!' Tony's voice contrived to suggest that the ultimate justification had now confirmed his choice of country, and his devious way of

  achieving it.

  Frescobaldi entered the Airport tunnel as boldly as the many sleeker cars. David held his steady thirty-five in the left-hand stream.

  'Whatever have you got in that box on your knee,'

  'Byrd,' Tony said. 'Hell wake up in Italy.'

  'Hope he won't make trouble with the officials.'

  Why,' Tony was indignant. 'He would normally be flying south anyway. I told him it just so happened we were going that way.'

  The Airport was a sea of colour; swirling with elegant people. David experienced new wonder at the neat figure of the boy, which seemed to stand out amid the concourse as the brightest, most compelling thing. Tony's face was radiant with happiness. Throughout the rush of paper formalities David followed behind him feeling that there could be no possible connection between them, or that if there was, then he was shadowing a phantom through the last moments of a dream.

  'A bird called Byrd,' Tony explained.

  'What kind is it,'

  'A grey swallow.'

  'Keep it out of sight then,' the officer said.

  There was little time to lose. Loud-speakers muttered soothingly. Then came the announcement of their own departure: 'Viscount flight one-zero-seven-nine: passengers for Rome.' The reassuring voice was almost bored.

  'Us!' Tony said.

  They stepped from the bus into freak November sunshine. Tony placed his right hand firmly in David's jacket pocket as they walked.

  'Tones, for goodness' sake,' David exclaimed, though he knew the protest to be useless.

  A few yards from the foot of the steps the boy stopped abruptly. David felt the tension in his body from the light contact of the hand in his pocket, and turned to look at him.

  'It's those men,' Tony said.

  David had no need to follow his gaze. The meaning was apparent in his face, and in his eyes, which were like those of a young colt which is about to be branded. Now David did turn his head. The two familiar pressmen were approaching from a small knot of people who had been standing beneath the wing of the Viscount. The leading one raised his camera as he advanced. He never used it.

  David heard the boy shout: 'I'm going round the other side!' Simultaneously Tony wrenched his hand from his pocket. The voice held the unnerving tremulousness of panic; but at the same time there was in it a note of inspiration and defiance.

  David heard the cry and turned round. There was a patch of oil where Tony had slipped. His arm had cradled his face as he fell. Slowly David moved forward.

  Byrd stepped out of his spilt box indignantly. He blinked in the unaccustomed sunlight; then, unsteadily, he took flight. From where he crouched beside the boy David raised his eyes to meet those of the pressman, who was lowering his camera. He looked about him at the gathering people, and down again at the boy.

  'It's broken ... my leg's broken,' Tony said hysterically. Tears came to his eyes; but then he passed into a heaving unconsciousness with bitter fury twisting his lips.

  Perhaps his groaning sleep was a blessing. Minutes later it occurred to a keen doctor in the first-aid station to slit both best sock and shorts with a scalpel. Through his numbness David sensed the particular expertise as stemming entirely from a private emotional state existing between the young man and his admiring nurse. Power was being demonstrated, though for no medically apparent reason.

  Hysteria snatched at David's own breathing. It was too funny. But he drove his nails into the palm of his hand and walked quickly away into the crowd.

  Book Three

  Chapter 30

  Three days later David left for Spain. He stayed there six months absorbing music and physically playing with gold. From a nursing home in Budleigh Salterton Tony cabled him fifty pounds. He described this as his special agent's fee. The goldsmith to whom David had unofficially apprenticed himself was delighted. They had, as it were, more plasticine between them. The outcome of David's training was an exact copy of Tony's snake-clasp belt buckle - in the purest refinement in the world. He airmailed this ironic gift to Glenelgin. London Customs didn't so much as open the envelope.

  After the burnt browns of Spain England looked tenderly green. The trees and hedgerows seemed edible as lettuce hearts. The sunlight came filtered through pastel gauze, and the fields were pale as new butter. In Scotland the contrast was worse. Grey and pink people matched the heather in watery sleep. Air filled the lungs like a scent-spray blown over ice.

  Once more David ate with his brother. Half-seen vapours found out bare skin in the baronial hotel. There was no smiling laughter. People ate with unfocused eyes. Had Dracula shrieked in the turrets it must have gone unremarked by the diners. A paralysed waiter limped among the tables with horseradish sauce in a silver boat. He brought cold quantities of beer in grossly moulded tankards. If only, David thought, some Bertie Wooster would begin chucking rolls. None did. They themselves were a frivolity grudgingly suffered, and they kept their voices down.

  All that had been an hour ago. Now at least they were alone. The sun's impartiality was more benevolent; the air washed free from other peo
ple, and from memory. Like all new things the laundered afternoon was not without sadness.

  Tony was totally blue. He'd contrived to look only a little less woolly in navy. There was an explanation for this.

  'They're Dragon - from Oxford,' the boy said. 'the uniform ones don't have pockets - I ask you!'

  'Can't have Glenelgin boys slouching round like Mods, I suppose. Where do the others keep their hankies?'

  'Bugger the inconvenience and insult -- it's the looks,' Tony said impatiently. 'But they haven't forbidden these yet.' David sat in Frescobaldi. Standing outside, Tony rocked the car dangerously.

  'Oh, I've hair - some!' Tony said suddenly the voice, the enthusiasm, the quick movement of his body was the St. Cecilia's child's again.

  David turned away. 'Splendid ... splendid, dear boy! Tones, I must go now'

  'It was a bloody good lunch anyway.'

  'Anyway - I must go.'

  'One of our maids!. Tony said, pointing suddenly. His expression had become uncertain, yet aggressive.

  'We had fun with ours - I remember,' David said. Frescobaldi seemed at that moment a ridiculous car. 'These really are new and woolly and blue.' With some mechanical disinterest driving him, he squeezed the boy's behind. But angrily.

  Tony arched his hips away in mock ecstasy and horror. 'Not my day,' he said inexplicably.

  'You've a long way to go,' David said.

  'Home? For the holidays,'

  'That too. Or anywhere that's …'

  'There's the little ... well, ah-hem … tart!' Tony interrupted. 'The one I lent your gold belt to.'

  David smiled. Somewhere something was absurd. 'He isn't even pretty,' he said with genuine amusement.

  'Well, shit it, Rogers - you can't get up a maid every night,'

  'Up?'

  'To the dormitories.' Tony said, half-listening.

  'You're being bloody silly, Tones. The hell of it is you'll have to live it, know it, regret it

  'Philosophy!' Tony said, bowing, and smiling happily.

  'If you like.'

  'And I've only been done once in two terms.'

  'Shut up!' David said. The boy's loneliness rather than jealousy made him bitter.

  'Forbes has a maid or a boy every night,' Tony said excitedly. 'And he says crazy, disgusting things! Oh, "Don't get the wrong 'ole - there are three, you know," about the maids; and. "Good fun ripping new shorts off a Kid-boy" ...'

  'Tones- this bloke never said that last bit. You thought it.’

  Under the cheek-bones the blood springing up; the eyes dropping away, discovered. Tony's fingers, gripping the window, slid apart and together again, leaving a smear on the glass. David stooped to check his hand-brake. Tony recovered the more quickly.

  'Did you ever do a little boy properly? When you were in Arabia?'

  'Algeria.'

  'Well, they're Arabs.'

  'Berbers,' David said. He didn't know why he had become pedantic and remote at the same time.

  'Did you bugger one?' Tony asked with a guilt-filled smirk. 'Did you? Hayward says it bursts them.'

  'Who -who's Hayward?'

  'Oh, sorry - a prefect. But tell me!'

  Dodd laid an unlit cigarette carefully down the length of the boy's nose. 'Tonimus,' he said.

  Tony frowned. He looked about him at the trees, the drive and buried buildings. 'I still love you,' he said. 'One night I'll let you do what you want to me. All right?'

  'It was what you wanted before.'

  'And you!'

  'True. It was with, though not to,' David said.

  'Only . . . properly.' Tony was looking intense. Then his thought scattered. 'Anyway, I'm going to do one of the maids - soon, anyway,' be said. Petulantly, his fingers explored mute chords on the lowered window. 'G minor,' he explained, dreaming. 'D'you want to kiss me now no one's looking?'

  David clasped Tony, though the steel door divided them. It was disinterestedly violent, mushy, without taste - like biting into a water-melon with white marble pips.

  'Strewth!' Tony said. He drew the back of his hand across his lips.

  David pulled the self-starter. It whined tiredly.

  'I'll give you a push down the hill.'

  'The broad and primrose,' David said. The engine started; Tony didn't hear.

  'Be good!' David called cheerfully. He was alone now. Nothing dramatic. And perhaps only for a bit. Then probably one often uttered inanities from loneliness.

  'Write!' Tony yelled.

  'Rather ...surely!' David called happily.

  The Austin Seven was gathering speed. He'd started to race in a Seven-Fifty. But that had had a torsion bar, special rear springing ... You could feel the road beneath it. Now David could not even feel his own body. There was strength in his wrists and he knew some live thing in his mind must keep him locked to the road. It was like an aircraft's blind-landing equipment perhaps.