The Sinful Stones

by Peter Dickinson

  And the hell with that, too. His mind, too rebellious to think in an orderly fashion when it ought by rights to have been hull down in the seas of dream, kept sidling off from its proper problems back to a single obsessive figure, back to the quiet-voiced railway clerk who used to walk hand in hand with small Jamie Pibble along the streets of Clapham on Sunday afternoons, explaining things. Always explaining: the principles of the electric motor as a tram banged past; Lloyd George’s betrayal of his soul and his party where a shredded election poster hung from black brick; natural selection when they came to the serried tulips in Councillor Blacker’s front garden. . .Pibble, transfixed by the pang of memory, stood still and looked upward; the Atlantic wind was herding streamers of cloud so fast that the stars behind them seemed to be racing to the west—Father would have found that a fine occasion for an explanation of the phenomenon of parallax.

  But what had he been like? How could anyone tell, who only knew him out of context—when his illness, and the war, and his row with Francis Francis had combined to cut him off from his proper sphere and leave him with no other concern than to keep his wife and son fed and warm in the cramped house on the steep street?

  The only person who could answer that question had been dead forty-three years. (Odd that Sir Francis had bothered to count them.) He’d have known, too, whether he had schizoid tendencies. Pibble remembered the sleepless summer night when he’d crept down and settled on the canvas drugget which protected the precious stair-carpet, and then listened in a chilly half-dream to Father’s voice as it explained the neighbours in terms of the cheap copy of The Plain Man’s Guide to Freud which he’d spent his tobacco money on that week: why Betty Fasting made such a fuss about her dustbins; why Ted Fasting, in consequence, insisted on growing his prize onions in the front garden for all the street to see; why the Barton sisters held those hissing quarrels over the proper treatment of their aspidistra; why Joe Pritchett would cross the street to touch a lamp-post; and (just as mysterious to the shivering listener as any of the other explanations) why Mr Martin the rent collector—the one with the year-round snivel—ought to be watched in case he tried to become friendly with small Jamie. Father’s even, earnest sentences hung disembodied in the dusk of the hallway, answered by Mother’s interjections, shocked and admiring and commonplace. Small Jamie had fallen asleep against the newel-post and never knew how he was carried up to bed; Mother must have done it, for Father’s lungs wouldn’t have stood the effort. But he’d woken next morning knowing that Mr Martin with the bull’s-eyes was somehow ogrish, though theirs was the only house in the street he didn’t call at; small Jamie had worried for a week how to warn Sara Fasting (a whole year older, a whole year more worldly wise) without betraying his own secret knowledge—worried too long and decided too late.

  Shrivelled with that childhood guilt Pibble walked on. The path, still smooth and rolled, sloped down and twisted to ease the sharp descent to the harbour. There was spume in the wind now that he was so close to where the big rollers picked irritably at the small granite protrusion of Clumsey Island, the ocean fingering this pimple of land. He’d only seen the island from above, peering through the windows of the helicopter at the tilting seascape as the machine swung and settled. Even to his unseamanlike eye, even through that grimy and half-opaque triplex, the harbour had seemed awkwardly placed, aimed due west into the gap below the Outer Hebrides where the main ocean came lolloping through.

  The road yanked back on itself, running directly under the cliffs; despite the scouring wind, Pibble could smell the unalterable smells of any harbour, however large or small, tar and diesel-­oil and dead fish. He was walking along level and spray-slimy paving when two green lights blinked on in the dark before him, moved, and were eyes—eyes at the wrong level, too high for a cat and too low (please God) for a ghoul. He stood still and held the lantern forward.

  The eyes were moving, becoming larger, nearer, a pony? But there was no clack of hooves—Crippen, it was a dog.

  Stand still and don’t be afraid, Father used to say. They can smell fear. So Pibble stood and sweated with terror as the creature stalked, hackles slightly raised, into his globule of lantern-light. He could see a faint brindling on its coat: it was a Great Dane. It stalked forward until its nose poked into his habit just below the nipples. There it stopped and snuffled.

  The hackles dropped. Whatever it had smelt was not fear, evidently. It lowered its big skull and licked Pibble’s free hand. He scratched it behind the ears, then walked a few yards along the quay until he came to a bollard, on which he sat. The dog plonked its head into his lap, nuzzling his arm for more attention. Pibble settled the lantern on the stones behind the bollard and tried to see into the dark. The total blackness behind him was cliffs, and the squatter blackness to his right was a large shed. Straight in front the gleam of starlight flicked off the crinkled water; where the movement ceased must be where the quay jutted out to give the harbour some protection from the booming ocean. But the quay seemed to bulge and give off a steadier glimmer in two places. Separating dark from dark to the west he discerned a probable horizon; following its line with his eye he saw that it was interrupted just where the lights gleamed by a small building, a building with masts, a boat.

  He got up and walked along the quay, the dog pacing beside him, until his lantern showed him a white stern on which gleamed the gold word Truth. Bracketing this word two hulking outboard motors hung, swung up horizontally above the glimmering lop of the tamed ocean. A short gangway led to the deck and Pibble already had one foot on it when a wet and bony grip closed round his wrist and hauled him back.

  It was the Great Dane, still very friendly, but urging him to desist for its own good reasons. Pibble allowed himself to be policed back to the bollard, where the hound immediately snuggled close against him, settling its heavy jowl into his shoulder almost exactly where Sister Rita’s head had lain. The coarse hide quivered continually with the ecstasy of contact; Pibble, grateful for the animal warmth, put his lantern down again so that he could tease the long spine—four such beasts to adore him and he’d have been as cosy as any nightwatchman over his brazier.

  Think, Pibble! He wanted you up here for something, and he was uncertain how much you knew. Just an old man’s whims, perhaps—senility can take other forms than the ones you once became so drearily familiar with. But (a) there is a probability, at least, that a valuable document has been pirated, and (b) you don’t know quite whose pigeon it would be, but surely the Community is the wrong place for a schizophrenic like Sister Rita.

  He shuddered like a labourer shaken by his road-drill.

  Poor Pibble, trying to tune in to sense and duty, those stodgy inescapable angels, telling him to find out what he could without causing a disturbance, then go home and make a report which would send some colleague round to ask questions at the newspaper office and publishers, and another to come winging up to Clumsey Island to disrupt the monks’ harsh idyll—but through the signal came a mush of other voices, as happens at night, saying but then how’ll you ever find out what did happen at the Cavendish? Only the old man can tell you, the last witness, sick, compos only at the regular four-hour intervals when the fierce mind spouts regular as a geyser—and he’s cheating you over something, as he cheated Father over something, but you’ve a counter to bargain with, being a policeman and trying to trace the supposed memoir-stealers, hey?

  Father, told these motives, would have bent his index finger back, paled, made a false start, and then shown small Jamie in quiet phrases too clear for any misunderstanding that he was lying to himself, cheating himself. “Get the half-crown accent!” the coalmen had jeered when Father went up the street to tell them that they were giving the Miss Bartons short measure, but small Jamie, even now, had no such counter-attack.

  So he should make a report. It should cover both the manuscript and the Community effect on Sister Rita and other fragile minds.

  A single
midnight meeting with one near-senile elder, and another with a crazed teenager? Some report! Oh yes, and the microphone.

  Pibble stared at the harbour and found that he could follow the quay out to the blind light-tower at its end. Craning round he saw that the sky above the cliffs was paler, and the stars diminished. Could it be dawn already? The hound sighed as he rose, but did not follow him up the cliff path into the wind’s inimical caress. So at least it would be tolerably honest to rootle around for a day or two more; and he’d need an excuse for staying, which Sir Francis would have to supply by pretending to wish to know more about the Pibbles for his book; and that would mean several more interviews in which the talk would run, inevitably, on Father.

  It wasn’t dawn, it was moonrise. Hard to connect this indifferent crescent with the dreamy, rust-tinged round that shines on Lovers’ Lanes. It was well up in a big patch of clear sky, just to the left of the buildings; so silhouetted the central tower looked crookeder than ever. Even this theatrical light, enhancing the gaunt outline while concealing the muddle and mess of the lower buildings, could not lend the structure a momentary dignity. It was certainly big—a gruesome amount of human effort had gone into building it—and would be vast when it was finished, if ever. Pibble had a momentary vision of the entire island covered with this quasi-Gothic fungus. But its confused proportions disguised its size. It reminded him in some ways of those strange, isolated sheds which Air Force engineers improvise on the perimeter of airfields, in the nastiest available brick, with the ungainliest conceivable outlines, on the most conspicuous skyline, and then top off with a rust-dribbling water-tank.

  But now it meant sleep and warmth, if there was warmth anywhere in the world. Pibble tramped gingerly towards it. Either he was becoming cannier at walking without shoes or his feet had lost all feeling.

  2

  You can see him now,” said the voice again. “You’ll get the itch if you sleep in that bloody thing.”

  Pibble knew that he hadn’t slept, but how had he been so anxiously fishing for a sunken boat in Mount Pond on the Common, a grown man wearing a sailor suit which he mustn’t get muddy? He opened his eyes.

  There was no lantern this time. Drab daylight and icy air came through the glassless window.

  “Don’t wait for me,” he said. “I know my way.”

  “You excited him,” said Sister Dorothy, bitterly.

  “He excited himself, I’m afraid,” said Pibble. “Has he ever talked to you about his dispute with my father?”

  “He doesn’t talk to me now, about that or anything else. Try Brother Servitude.”

  No time for shirt and trousers, but glorious socks, at least. Civilised shoes. Ouch! His left big toe was too swollen with last night’s bruising to conform to the once familiar leather; and the outer edge of his right foot was very tender too. Socks alone, then? No. If he stole about like the rest of the Community there was an extra chance that they would forget to be on their guard, those who knew anything. Perhaps he ought to ask for a green habit, or a brown one—nobody else seemed to sport this staring orange. His skin was tingling strangely on his fore-arm, and he snatched back the sleeve to peer at a patch where the coarse cloth had printed its graph-paper squares on his sleeping flesh. Panicky with the dread of nameless blains and flakings, blotches and pustules, he started to wriggle out of the habit. And a finely inconspicuous figure he’d be, creeping about Clumsey Island in blue pin-stripes on bare and bleeding feet. He wriggled back.

  She was waiting for him after all.

  “Don’t let on that I told you,” she said, “but you’ve got to remember he’s not just old. He’s ill.” Her voice was not quite as bleak as hitherto, but tinged with a faint echo of that cooing note which had come last night through the soaked microphone.

  “He’s a long way from medical attention, isn’t he?” said Pibble.

  “Brother Patience was a doctor,” she said. “He gives him his drugs.”

  “What’s he on?”

  “Cortisone.”

  “Is that what makes him so …”

  “Hairy?”

  “No. I meant …”

  “Bloody-minded?”

  “I wouldn’t …”

  “He’s always been like that, ever since I’ve known him, an utter bastard. Long before we came to this bloody place.”

  “Why did you come?”

  “He gave all his radio patents away to the Foundation, and we were broke. He used to come sailing up here, and I … Sh!”

  She slipped him a not-in-front-of-the-servants glance as they came round the last corner. Brother Hope was still in his niche, apparently full fathom five in trance; not one puckering of gooseflesh showed on the smooth pink steppes of skin; apart from his shepherding of Rita he probably hadn’t shifted all night from his original pose. He did not speak or stir as they passed. Pibble peeled off up the stairs, and Dorothy strode on without a word.

  His nose told him before his eyes, but he was coughing in the reeking smoke of Sir Francis’s room (sharp wood, rank rubber) before he could stop. A small gout of adrenalin gingered his middle-aged muscles up to the rescue of the doddering genius, supposing Pibble could find him in the murk.

  “That you, Pibble?” cried the creaking voice from the far corner. “Log fell out of my damned fire. Pick it up like a good fellow.”

  “Are you all right?” called Pibble.

  “Course I am, you damned fool. Get rid of that log. I’m in me bedroom.”

  Pibble stepped back to the landing, took a deep breath and blundered across the room by memory. He could barely see the log, even when he was close to. It had fallen in the most peculiar fashion, neatly against the side of the fender; luckily the rug had been shifted since his last visit, so that wasn’t burnt, nor the stone below—only the thin trail of flex which ran under the fender at that point and accounted for the burning-rubber smell. Pibble lifted the log with tongs and shoved it into the still cheery fire; then, weeping and blind, he plunged for the bedroom door. Who would have thought that one little log had so much smoke in it?”

  Sir Francis, lagged with blankets, was crouched on the edge of the bed looking as out-of-context as a condor in a zoo. But the pop eyes were bright.

  “Wire burnt through, hey?” he whispered.

  “I couldn’t see for smoke,” said Pibble, “but I wouldn’t have thought so. Only the insulation.”

  “Damned rum thing, knowledge,” said Sir Francis. “Here I am, full to the cruppers with knowledge—know more than anyone else in the world, I shouldn’t be surprised. Ought to be able to dream up a hundred and one easy ways of putting a mike out of action, accidental on purpose, hey? Only thought of one, and damned inconvenient and damned fishy too.”

  “Couldn’t you simply send for someone and tell him to take it away?”

  “Things a’n’t like that, not like that at all. Leave the door open?”

  “Yes, the smoke should clear pretty soon.”

  “Find the beggar who’s been cribbing my papers, hey?”

  “Not yet,” said Pibble. “I can’t go around asking questions in the middle of the night.”

  “But that’s what the damned police always do,” objected Sir Francis. “Hoist you out of bed in the middle of the night, throw a blanket over your head and take you off to clink for questioning. Why can’t you?”

  “I haven’t the authority.”

  “Yes, you have—you’ve got mine.”

  “I assure you, Sir Francis, I wouldn’t be likely to get anywhere if I woke up Father Bountiful …”

  “Couldn’t do that—the damned incontinent maniac’s nuzzling a half-caste actress half way up Everest. Rum end for the Hackenstadt meat millions, hey? Who’s on the other end of the microphone?”

  “Brother Hope.”

  “Arrested him, then? He must be in it?”

  “Probably, b
ut not certainly. For instance, he knew I was a policeman and may simply have wished to know what I was up to, perhaps even to protect you.”

  “Tchah!”

  “If you want him arrested, I shall have to question him directly, then fly back to the mainland, make a report, persuade my superiors that the case is fit for investigation, clear our responsibility with the local police, and come back with a full-dress team with warrants signed by the local magistrates—and, I imagine, seeing it’s you, about three hundred journalists.”

  “Can’t have that, you buffoon.”

  “In that case I shall have to try and find out what’s happened on my own, in an unofficial fashion. It’s going to be difficult enough by daylight, without breaking into people’s sleep.”

  “Damned bore, sleep. I haven’t slept for twenty-seven years, not counting anaesthetics.”

  “I’m between jobs at the Yard, and I’ve got three days leave due to me. I could stay that long. The best cover would be to pretend that your relationship with my father and the episode at the Cavendish were more important for your memoirs than you, presumably, think they are.”

  “Want to worm out all about your dad, hey?” said Sir Francis sharply.

  “Certainly I’d like to know anything there is to know.”

  “Vindicate him after all these years, o’ course?”

  “No.”

  “I wouldn’t waste a penny stamp to vindicate my father.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know much about him,” confessed Pibble.

  “No more do I. Boots is most of what I remember, stinking or rank black mud. He kept otter-hounds, went broke to feed ’em, had to take me away from Eton. Smashed up his son’s education for a lot of damned smelly dogs.”

  “That sounds an interesting chapter.”

  “Not that sort of book,” said Sir Francis. “Not about nobodies. My old man was a quintessential nobody—small country squire, kept otter-hounds, wife died in child-bed, only son too brainy to talk to, went broke, shot himself in a Vichy pension. Very low square, as my friends in the brown gowns would say.”