by Alan Judd
After some fumbling he pulled from the pocket of his corduroys a small heavy-looking revolver with a short barrel. ‘Don’t ask me how I got it. There’s also a bullet.’ He displayed the bullet in the palm of his hand. ‘The favour is, I want you to keep both for me in case during a fit of euphoria I shoot myself before leaving this place. I’ll have them back after Schools.’
Neither spoke. For the first time the ticking of the clock in Tim’s bedroom made itself noticeable.
‘I loathe examinations,’ Chetwynd concluded. ‘One or two people kill themselves every year over Schools, so why not me? Of course, I’d do it publicly, make a drama of it, splattering my brains across the front desk after handing my papers to the invigilator. I imagine him picking bits of membrane from his gown.’ He mimed a fastidious and urbane invigilator. ‘You’re right, Robert, I have to imagine it first. That’s because I don’t really want to do it, you see. Not yet, anyway. But the temptation remains. When I’m drunk I sometimes amuse myself with Russian roulette.’ He grinned. ‘Isn’t that a cliché?’
They smiled back.
‘You don’t know whether to take me seriously. I know the feeling. Watch.’ He broke the gun, slotted the bullet into the chamber and spun it a couple of times. Then he put the barrel to his head just in front of one ear and, grinning again and with his eyes open, squeezed the trigger.
There was a dull click. Everything was as before.
Chetwynd unloaded his gun. ‘Still here, you see. I had to make you believe. Wouldn’t expect you to take my word alone.’ He rested the gun on the table and stood the bullet on its base beside it. ‘And I do it for ever more trivial reasons, that’s the danger. It’s masturbatory, of course, ever my joy and solace. But I don’t want to die here. I want to die in London. Don’t ask me why, I hate the place. So, will you do it? Keep them from me until I ask for them back?’
The clock was audible again. Robert recalled his conversation with Hansford about guns. It had seemed absurd then but now seemed safe. He felt wearily sober. ‘Why not just give us the bullet? Comes to the same thing.’
‘No, it must be both. It’s more difficult then for me to break in and get them.’
Robert sipped his whisky without enthusiasm, feeling Tim’s glance upon him. He held out his hand. Chetwynd tossed the bullet and he caught it. He put it on the floor and rolled it backwards and forwards with his fingers.
Chetwynd pushed the revolver across the table to Tim, then pulled back one of the velvet curtains. The sun was just up and the brickwork of the New Building was offensively bright. Far beyond, the light touched the trees of Wytham Wood, making everything in the room seem tawdry and unreal.
Tim rubbed his pale face. ‘That’s blown it. Another day, another night.’
Chetwynd held on to the curtain. ‘Thank you both. We live through sympathy and through nothing else. We are dead otherwise. My father was a vicar.’ He sounded as if he meant to go on but stopped and remained without looking up. ‘He died. Yours haven’t yet, I suppose?’
‘Mine left,’ said Tim. ‘When I was twelve. Two stepfathers.’
Chetwynd nodded. ‘A full bladder makes me want to talk piss as well as do it. May I?’
‘Be my guest.’
He pushed the revolver farther aside, knelt on the table and opened the bottom half of the window. ‘Who lives below?’
‘Hansford.’
‘He’ll think it’s early morning rain on his windowsill. Dawn is so depressing.’
‘He may have clothes hanging out to dry,’ said Robert.
Chetwynd was framed against the daylight. He raised both hands and shook with silent laughter.
The Middle Eastern situation worsened. The American fleet was reinforced and there was talk of a blockade. When an American aircraft carrier and its shadowing Russian minesweeper collided, with no damage to either, there was excited television and press comment to the effect that this was the sort of incident that could begin a third world war. The Royal Navy committed a ship to the area.
There was frequent speculation about the reintroduction of conscription and about the immediate use of chemical weapons by the Soviet army in what one newspaper called ‘the introductory pre-nuclear exchange’. There were rumours, started and repeated solely by the press, about the making and issuing of sixty million chemical protection suits (CPSs) and respirators. Married middle-class women in their thirties flocked to join peace groups and some enterprising firms did a brisk trade in fall-out shelters. The Government did nothing.
Fortunately the crisis was not so dire as to interfere with Eights Week, the inter-college rowing championship. This took place in the fifth week of term and was the climax of the rowing year. The city – at least the university part of it that someone had aptly dubbed ‘the Latin Quarter of Cowley’ – took on a carnival atmosphere. The sun burned unabated, lectures were deserted, revisions neglected, tutorials postponed. Christ Church meadows thronged with undergraduates drinking in the college boat-houses. Some went up river to shout at the eights, others lay supine in the grass.
The college had a good chance of becoming Head of the River and so was practically empty. Even Orpwood, who disdained sport and used the absence of opposition to plaster the Junior Common Room with Stop the War posters, was twice seen on the river, a can of beer in his hand.
Tim went in the afternoon following the night with Chetwynd. He had set out to work and had got as far as the library. Guilt left him now that he was strolling contentedly among the crowds. It was a relief to be in company and see no one he knew, to be ungreeted and unknown, until he ran into Hansford.
Hansford pressed a beer on him and talked for twenty minutes about the rowing. He had done a wholehearted job in the college third eight which had been bumped – defeated – the day before. It was all the fault of the cox, apparently.
Tim felt he had to do something to show gratitude for his beer. ‘Talking of bumping, has anyone had a go at you yet?’
Hansford lowered his can and looked from side to side. ‘Not yet, but I’m not dropping my guard. This Iraqi geezer’s still coming, remember. They might try and coincide it with that. The worse the crisis gets the more the Lefties will try to stir up trouble at home.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Things are pretty bad.’ Hansford looked solemn. ‘In fact, I’m wondering whether I shouldn’t give up accountancy and try for a commission. Trouble is, if there is a war it might be over by the time I’d finished training.’
‘So might the world.’
‘That too.’
Tim did not see Robert until the following morning when he was trying out a new blend of coffee.
Robert was vigorous and cheerful. ‘I could smell it from the quad.’
They normally saw each other daily but Robert seemed unaware of the lapse. ‘I made some yesterday, too,’ said Tim.
‘Yesterday.’ Robert made it sound a very long time ago. ‘Yesterday – I went back to Portmeadow and slept. A pint and a half in the Perch, then rehearsals.’
‘No work?’
‘No work.’
‘I may forgive you.’
‘I hope so. I have a favour.’
‘Not another gun?’
‘No. What have you done with it?’
Tim tapped the table. ‘In the drawer. Don’t know where else to put it. Under the mattress seemed so corny. Where’s the bullet?’
Robert forced his hand into the pocket of jeans and produced the bullet after a struggle. ‘It’s so difficult to get out I can’t lose it.’
‘Do you think he was serious?’
‘The Russian roulette bit was pretty convincing.’
‘He’s gone to ground now. Not even a light in his room.’ He waited, making Robert wait. ‘Well?’
Robert grinned. ‘A lift to Minster Lovell. There’s an old Jaguar.’
Tim slapped his thigh and laughed. Whenever he laughed it sounded false, Robert reflected. Smiling suited Tim better.
‘I�
�ll take you to Minster Lovell on condition we include the Old Swan.’
From the security of owning a BMW Tim followed with relish each of Robert’s automotive adventures. Robert had had many cars, all from the bottom end of the market, and they were the major cause of his financial ruin. Two terms before he had nearly been sent down for non-payment of college bills and battels but had been bailed out by Tim. He had then had to work on a building site throughout the vac and had sold his coat and some of his books in order to repay him, though Tim neither wanted nor needed the money. It was the closest they had come to serious disagreement. Tim was still pleased to be asked any favour.
‘Jesus, it must be getting bad,’ he said. ‘What are you trying to buy your way out of now – Schools, the play, Anne and Dr Barry and all that?’
‘Come on, I’ve been restrained all this term. It’s been building up.’
‘Only because your last little affair bankrupted you. What is this Jag?’
‘Fifteen years old. Very cheap. Still has an MOT. They’re bound to appreciate one day.’
‘You were still saying that about the Armstrong the day they came to take it away. You’re off your head. Everyone has trouble with old Jags. Oil, rust, petrol. And two days ago you wanted that Daimler Majestic. Anyway, what are you going to buy it with?’
‘I’m in credit with the insurance on the Armstrong. I’m getting the money back and I’ll use part of it to insure the Jag for a month and the rest to buy it. It’s taxed for a month, too. Also, I wouldn’t use it much, hardly at all, so it wouldn’t cost much in petrol. In fact, it could be regarded as a financial discipline, a way of saving.’
‘Go on.’
‘I’ve never had an old Jaguar.’
‘Don’t.’
‘It’s red.’
‘Buy a mini and paint it.’
Robert raised his arms in a gesture of hopelessness, as of one in the thrall of vast impersonal forces. His desire for cars had never had anything to do with need.
‘An old Jag’, continued Tim, ‘with its ends knocked out and its pistons coming through the crankcase, is not a car, it’s a concept. You are seeking a concept of yourself – an even more self-destructive one than usual. You must be changing.’
‘Maybe I’m finding the right one at last.’
‘Again.’
They set off in the BMW with the sun roof open and at Tim’s usual exhilarating pace. He loaded the cassette player and spent most of the journey adjusting it to his meticulous ear. Robert rested his arm on the door and gazed contentedly down the valley of the Windrush.
‘Do you think Chetwynd would really do it?’ Tim had to raise his voice above the wind and music.
‘He almost did, didn’t he?’
‘Not that I’m blaming him. I mean, why not, when you come to look at it? What’s so special?’
‘It’s a nice day, that’s why not. You may as well go on as long as you enjoy it.’
‘That all?’
Robert raised his hands.
The Jaguar did not live up to its advertisement. ‘Mechanically sound’ included oil pressure that dropped significantly after high revving and ‘good for year’ bodywork that was bad even for that. There had been a rough respray on the front wings and the interior was scruffy. The seller, a young man with a wispy moustache and dull downcast eyes, said he was unemployed, had worked in a garage and was now setting himself up in the motor trade. He lived in a council house with three sallow children and an unhappy-looking wife. Robert bought the car.
Tim hovered while the haggling went on, embarrassed. The agreed price was appropriately low. Robert had to leave what he had on him as a deposit. The man was to deliver the car to Oxford when Robert had the rest of the money.
‘You’re out of your skull,’ Tim said as they drove away.
‘I liked the feel of it.’
‘You won’t when you start feeling with your pocket.’
‘But I feel better.’
‘And it’s a nice day, don’t tell me.’
The Old Swan was on the bank of the Windrush in the quaint part of the village. The restaurant was closed, to Tim’s intense disappointment, and they had to sit by an empty fireplace with chicken and chips. Tim picked at his before offering the remains to Robert who scooped it on to his plate.
‘Does anything affect your appetite?’ Tim asked.
‘Food and the lack of it. You?’
Tim sighed. ‘The way they’re fried.’
When they left Tim offered Robert the chance to drive. He was normally very protective of his car but the sun, the beer, the reassuring sound of a distant lawnmower and a general carelessness, a wish to be rid of things, all combined. After an inconclusive discussion about insurance they meandered back through the lanes. On one bend they had a clear view of the ravages of Dutch Elm disease, field after field lined with dead trees.
‘Looks like the war’s already happened,’ said Tim.
They were nearing Swinbrook when a pale ginger cat jumped from the cow parsley on the nearside bank. Robert braked hard and stopped. ‘I didn’t feel anything, did you?’
Tim looked back. ‘Can’t see it.’
‘I thought I heard a thump, though.’
‘Maybe.’
They saw nothing when they first got out. The afternoon was hot and silent. It seemed likely that the cat had escaped into the field on the other side of the lane. It was Tim who heard the faint hissing. The cat was on its back, beneath the rear axle.
Robert pulled the car forward so that the creature was exposed. It lay on the tarmac, writhing with the top half of its body only. Its mouth was open and it hissed with every breath. A car came the other way, slowed and passed on.
‘It can’t live,’ said Tim.
‘Could take hours to die.’
‘Better kill it.’
‘Put it out of its agony.’
They spoke to reassure each other. Robert climbed the bank and found a large stone and a stick.
‘You going to do it?’
‘I was driving.’ Robert considered his weapons. Smashing its head with the stone would be the surest, breaking its skull like an eggshell. But that seemed gratuitously brutal, as if deliberately overdoing it. He could run it over again but that was cumbersome. He decided to break its neck with a single blow from the stick.
He raised the stick with both hands and brought it down hard across the cat’s throat. The body jumped and the stick broke on the road, leaving him holding only a foot or so of wood. The cat jerked and twitched in slow spasms, its hissing weak and irregular.
‘I’ll get another one,’ Robert said with forced calm, and climbed up the bank again. Tim said something he didn’t catch. He turned in time to see him raise the stone with both hands and bring it down on the animal’s head. The hissing stopped.
A blackbird sang, close by, and above them, louder, nearer and nearer, a jet made its approach to Brize Norton. Tim edged the stone aside with his foot. The cat’s head was intact but thinner and there was blood in its lips.
Robert dragged it by one warm hind leg to the side of the road. ‘Thanks.’ Tim said nothing. ‘Where do you think it comes from?’
‘Dunno.’
Tim seemed listless, indifferent, more than calm. Robert had to make an effort to control his voice. ‘Not much point in asking.’
‘No.’
He offered the keys but Tim shook his head. ‘You carry on.’
Robert did not want to drive but told himself it was absurd to be so upset over a cat. Upset over nothing because it was nothing now. There had been something to be upset about before but now there was nothing at all. ‘Thanks.’ he said again, briskly.
Neither spoke until they were on the main road.
‘Maybe not such a nice day,’ said Robert.
Tim shrugged. ‘Not nice for us, okay for the cat.’
‘Not very okay.’
‘Put the feeling aside. There’s nothing else then.’
Robert dr
ove cautiously at first but found it was making him brood. He felt better going faster. He overtook two lorries and had to swerve to avoid an oncoming third.
‘Sight of blood whet your appetite?’ murmured Tim, without looking round.
*
Dr Barry was restless and sharp in tutorials, often amusing, sometimes petulant. He would cross and uncross his legs and scratch his head or ankle vigorously when making a point. When bored or impatient he would end the tutorial abruptly. Tim avoided revision tutorials but Robert attended one because he had chosen an ethics and philosophy of religion option that was open to theologians. Like the lecture, it was a way of avoiding serious work.
He arrived late for the revision class that afternoon. The sherry had already been round, Dr Barry was in high good humour and he sprawled in his armchair with one leg over the side and scratched his shin with a ruler. ‘Glass in the cupboard, Robert. Help yourself.’
There were eight or nine others, some sitting on the floor. Robert had to squat against Dr Barry’s chair and face them. He hoped he would not have to contribute. It was soon clear that Dr Barry was not confining himself to the Schools paper but was trotting out some of his hobby-horses.
‘Same with ethics,’ he said, with a wave of his ruler. ‘Disguised moralizing. All this agonizing from people like Hare. Ridiculous. Wretched stuff.’
He moved from ethics to philosophy of religion, on which there were likely to be only a couple of questions. Two too many, he thought. He was cheerfully atheistic and tried to provoke his class but they responded reluctantly. What little intellectual curiosity they possessed quickly evaporated in the face of Schools. They wanted to be told what to write in their papers.
‘You’re a lot of dumplings this afternoon. Robert.’ He rested the ruler on Robert’s head. ‘Would you say that the end of all religion is consolation?’
Robert, recalled from a trance-like vacancy, said what first came into his head. ‘I think it would be the end.’
Dr Barry laughed and his bare lower leg jerked up and down. ‘Just as all true romances end in marriage. Where’s the sherry? I’d give you something stronger only the tutor’s allowance won’t run to it.’