The Sinful Stones

by Peter Dickinson

  The process was curious, and in its way ingenious. The Refectory was two storeys high already, but beyond it three sets of vaulted ground-floor cells ran westwards—first the set with the doctor’s room at the end, then the puzzling line of windowless cells, and finally the guest cells. The storey over the first vault was now almost finished and was being roofed with the rafters and slates from the second vault, whose long hummock of rough grey stone now lay exposed and ready for its own second storey, which in turn would be topped off with the roof from the guest-cells. It was a kind of masonic leap-frog.

  Brother Providence pointed and explained. The gangs of initiates hauled, heaved and cemented, silent except for the rapid patter of prayer whenever any large stone had to be cajoled into place. St Bruno had vanished, and another man was doing his job. The gulls creaked, the wind hissed, the far foam snored, and the easy voice beside Pibble spoke of discipline. No, they did not labour at the stones all day; after dinner they resorted to more spiritual disciplines, most of the brethren learning the art of meditation in the Refectory, unless called out to join special groups for exercises of the soul under the guidance of one Virtue. Those in particular need, such as poor Rita, received individual help in the difficult disciplines of world-renunciation—Providence himself was called to give that help, while Brother Hope was specially adept in the management of small groups. In the winter, of course, when the days were so short in these latitudes, all worked on the stones while it was light and did their spiritual exercises in the dark. The dark, indeed, could be a great help to certain stubborn souls; if only it were possible to still all the fallen senses at once, then the path of renunciation would be markedly smoother. No, Brother Simplicity no longer joined them in these disciplines, and neither did Sister Dorothy. They had never been sealed, but when Simplicity had made his final throw and gone to the ultimate squares, no doubt Sister Dorothy would join them with a whole heart.

  “She’ll be a tough nut,” said Pibble, unthinkingly.

  Brother Providence appeared not to notice this hint that the methods of the Community were no more than routine will-breaking, such as innumerable faiths have seen, feeding innumerable inquisitions, filling innumerable prisons. The thought of prisons chimed with a gang of initiates trooping back from some task of stone-displacement in shuffling silence at a pace he had seen before, the dreary step of convicts to and from the exercise yard or their day’s work. Remembering Providence’s mysterious challenge he scanned the group for familiar faces; one woke a faint echo. There ought, by rights, to be a third-rate lock-picker somewhere about—perhaps the very man who’d recognised Pibble. St Bruno would have made more mess of the lock than that faint curl of swarf—where was St Bruno? And another thing, what had brought the several ex-cons whom the monk had spoken of to this unlikely preventive detention?

  He was aware of a sharpness, a pay-attention-boy note, in Brother Providence’s last remark. (Got it! The man had been a schoolmaster!)

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “There’s so much to take in at one go—the mind becomes numbed.”

  “Ah.”

  The big head nodded understandingly. If you took St Bruno, or Rita, as your yardstick numb minds were the Community’s stock-in-trade.

  “Did you ask me something?” said Pibble.

  “No matter, my dear fellow. It must seem a contrast to the routine of your normal life. I too have known routines.”

  The problem of the trout which wishes to retain the angler’s interest is to nose at the fly without disdain.

  “Yes,” said Pibble, “it’s a contrast all right. I don’t know quite what to make of it yet. It certainly has its … um …”

  “Attraction? Yes, even a child can be attracted by the shape and colour of the board. There is hope, and more than hope, for all these”—he nodded towards a trudging gang—“because they have with our help become as little children.”

  “I know you’ll think it’s none of my business,” said Pibble, “but I’m worried about Sister Rita. I’d have thought a psychiatrist—”

  “You are talking the language of Babylon,” said the monk sharply. “There is a Babylon of the mind as well as of the body. In the Babylon of the body sister Rita was a harlot, though she came from quite a good family—distant connections of the Howards, to use the language of Babylon for a moment. She was at a dozen schools, then ran away with a group of popular musicians who introduced her to drugs before deserting her. She was found by Servitude supporting herself in Paddington under the guise of Senorita Rita, Spanish Exercises. The drugs, of course, are responsible for her mental state. Drugs. Matter which enslaves mind. The epitome of Babylon. I have been in touch with her family, and they are relieved to know that she is in our care. Our discipline is certainly hard for such a creature, deliberately hard, but we make sure that it is not hard beyond her endurance. And what we give her is not the palliatives of your Babylonish psychiatrists. They, even when successful in their own terms, merely make a soul content with whatever happens to be its state in the mess of fallen matter. We cure.”

  “How did Brother Servitude come across her?”

  “We are not as enclosed a Community as you may think, Superintendent. For instance, under the laws of Babylon we are a charity, and this demands negotiations with the tax people and other authorities. I myself have been to London twice this winter. Servitude goes more often. The Eternal City will need a great army of masons, and their recruitment is Servitude’s particular care. He has always been a seeker, sifting the faiths of Babylon until the Lord guided him to the true one, and he has many acquaintances among the priests of those faiths. I think someone in the Salvation Army introduced him to Rita.”

  Yes, Servitude, the garrulous gunner, was a lost-ten-tribesman, if ever. Useful to know that Providence had been in London, though the theft of the manuscript would have to wait. Pibble had deliberately asked no more about it than was plausible, and was already regretting having put his guide’s back up by trying to do his duty by Rita. She would have to wait too. Time to shift the talk to a less touchy area.

  “You draw your members from a fascinatingly wide range,” he said. “I was wondering about your pilot’s past history.”

  But the monk reacted as though Pibble had once more stepped on to ground where trespassers are shown coldly out by a gamekeeper with a gun under his arm.

  “I suppose there’s no harm your knowing,” he said after a pause. “Tolerance was a garage hand who had the misfortune to win a talent contest on television and decided to try his luck as a professional performer; but, as I have told you, luck is an illusion—he was willed towards the stage and then spared the hideous tortures of fame, and so willed for a while into ill company, and all for the single purpose of Brother Servitude finding him and bringing him to work for the City. Now I believe I have shown you all there is to see, though only a crumb of all there is to know. What would you prefer to do next?”

  Pibble looked at his watch. Just after eleven.

  “I think Sir Francis should be ready to see me quite soon,” he said. “Are you sure it’s all right for me to stay for another day or two? If …”

  “As a matter of fact it would suit us much better if you stayed. Tolerance has some mechanical work to do to both Truth and the helicopter, and if he stays at the harbour he can keep watch on Rita while she re-cuts her die. If he flies you back, we shall have to spare another Virtue from the afternoon’s exercises.”

  “Doesn’t she do them?”

  “No. The full Refectory confuses her mind, filling it with imaginings of the courts of the Kings of Babylon. She is one who must be guided alone.”

  “Oh,” said Pibble. “Shall I come and see you when I’ve finished with Sir Francis?”

  “Please do. Come to my office. If we were back in Babylon I should have been able to offer you Madeira before luncheon.”

  “I’m grateful enough anyway. This has b
een a most thought-provoking experience.”

  “I hope so,” said Brother Providence casually, and strode off along the cloisters.

  Pibble walked more slowly the other way. Madeira before luncheon. Distant connections of the Howards. A very posh brand of schoolmaster indeed, Brother Providence must have been. Unnerving—both in the elemental power of personality which he seemed able to call out at will, in the way that a snake-charmer conjures the cold beast out of a basket; and also in the deliberate, unsweating, willed social expertise, which all the world’s Pibbles long for, are ashamed of their longing, and know they will never achieve. And then this terrifying faith, with its garnishing of biblical cress—and the man believed in it, and believed that he was doing his victims good. Awful, hideous—or was Pibble’s revulsion and distrust a legacy from Mr Toger? His own faith was a disorderly drawerful of doubts, but at least it included a doubt of his own motives. Was it possible that the emotional stimulus of meeting Sir Francis at last, and summoning Father out of limbo, had also summoned other wraiths, a dismal chorus of Mother’s dour friends? Could he have been hating and distrusting the Community for revenge—stale, mean revenge?

  Come, Pibble, there was the microphone. But that could be explained. There were the fake pills, and perhaps they could too. A doctor must be entitled to administer placebos, though the book said. . .There was the picked lock. And Sir Francis, known traitor, might have done that in the course of some unfathomable deception. There was Rita, whose family approved of her presence here. Yes, she was morally inescapable, but not evidence.

  Hope was at his niche, not meditating but leaning casually against the wall, arms folded and legs crossed, watching the bustle of work as an office messenger watches the cranes on a building site. This time the flex snaked upwards, an eerie echo of the cold beast out of the basket. Pibble shivered, nodded, and climbed the stairs.

  Sister Dorothy was also leaning against a wall in an attitude which showed she couldn’t have stood without its help. She prodded an envelope towards Pibble as he came up.

  “Prov says to give him this,” she said in a thick whisper. “Don’t want the old sod to see me. Christ, I feel bloody queer.”

  “Why don’t you sit down for a bit?” said Pibble.

  He had to catch her as she slumped on to the top step. She groaned and hid her face in her hands. Pibble eased her against the wall again and went into the room.

  Sir Francis was sitting in his chair, but not as before. Now he looked truly old. The shoulders were stooped, the eyes lacked their fire. But the voice didn’t.

  “You’re two minutes late, you damned idiot. My time’s precious. Yours isn’t.”

  As he spoke he pointed over Pibble’s shoulder towards the vault.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” said Pibble and wheeled round.

  There hung the microphone, ten feet from the floor, plain to see once you’d looked for it but unreachable except with a ladder. Its flex left through a small hole in the vault, made by bashing out a fillet of stone. A few chips of rubble still lay on the carpet.

  “That’s what your damned fool of a father was always saying,” said Sir Francis, pushing a small pad of paper at Pibble.

  “I’ve remembered quite a bit more about him,” said Pibble as he took it. The writing seemed as firm as ever—or was there a flicker in the spiky loops? It said “My pill was different this morning. Wrong texture. Get me out or get a proper doctor here. Use your authority. Twelve hours …” Presumably the rest of the message had been interrupted by Pibble’s arrival. He fished in the pouch of his habit for his handkerchief, unknotted it and let the white tablets fall into his palm. He handed them to the old man.

  “Clever of you,” snarled Sir Francis. “Damned unmemorable fellow if ever I met one.”

  He took the tablets, tried one on his tongue, nodded, picked up a glass of water from the table by his chair and washed it down. The other he slipped into the back of his fob watch.

  “The trouble is,” said Pibble, “that all the things I remember are little unconnected bits, the way a child does remember things. Perhaps if you were to tell me your end, then I’d be able to piece together a more coherent pattern for you.”

  “Not on your damned life,” said Sir Francis. “That’s my job, piecing patterns together. Always has been.”

  “It’s mine, too.”

  “Tchah! Call the random buffoonery of prisoners a pattern? You tell me. Sit down.”

  “I can’t,” said Pibble. “I had a fall and hurt my arse.”

  Sir Francis cackled with real pleasure. Pibble jerked his thumb towards the microphone, then held his palms an inch apart to show the minnow of tale he had to tell, then touched his watch.

  “Must start some damned place,” said Sir Francis. “What’s the most important thing you know about his connection with me? There must be something to bring a man all the way up to this damned rock, hey?”

  That there must, and not only one man. Pibble nerved himself for the bullying that was certain to follow the truth.

  “Well,” he said, “I know he lost his job at the Cavendish because of a disagreement with you. It changed his whole life, that and the war. He died when I was eleven. He was a ticket clerk at Clapham Junction. But even then, with his whole life spoilt, he was a very remarkable man. I want to know what he was like before the war, and what sort of person he might have become if things had been different.”

  Sir Francis was laughing, but without a sound; rocking to and fro in his chair, mouth open, cheeks taut and purple.

  “A ticket clerk!” he shrieked at last. “No wonder our damned trains are still so hopeless!”

  It was a Grand Guignol exhibition of nastiness—and no less fake than those tomato-ketchup horrors; the hard eyes were still watching Pibble, and he ploughed on.

  “I doubt if even now I could understand what the disagreement was about. My father wouldn’t talk about it, but my mother would sometimes bring it up. She used to say that he should have won the Nobel Prize, and he sometimes answered that she was wrong, but he didn’t say why. She called it the Noble Prize, and I used to think it had something to do with the House of Lords. But since I grew up I’ve imagined that he felt he had contributed some element towards the research for which you got your 1912 Nobel Prize, and you hadn’t given him proper recognition.”

  “Tchah! Damned melodramatic ideas all you laymen have. Nothing like that at all. Chap like your dad wasn’t concerned with the theory, not one iota. His job was to build the gadgets to prove the theories—build what he’d been told and see that it didn’t leak. Lab mechanic can be a genius, mind you—Lincoln and Everett both were, in different ways—but a genius at building gadgets. Brunel, not Darwin.”

  It was at this point that Pibble remembered the envelope, clutched under his left armpit to leave his hands free for his earlier bit of dumb-show. He handed it to the old man, who clawed it open and drew out a smaller envelope, turning it over to study the big wax seal on the flap, so that Pibble could see but not read three words on the front in the familiar writing of the stolen MS.

  Pibble broke the long silence.

  “But you said my father was a great self-improver. I imagine that a man like that might have tried to follow the reasoning behind the gadgets he was building, and so might have stumbled on a usable idea.”

  “Stumbled is the word for Will Pibble. Neither of ’em said anything about they should have been damned rich, hey?”

  Pibble blinked.

  “Come on, you nincompoop,” shouted Sir Francis. “Doesn’t mean anything. Everybody believes they should have been damned rich. I’m just trying to get you started.”

  “My mother left all the money matters to my father, even when he was too ill to work and she had to go out. My father didn’t think in those terms, I think, though he was a careful saver. When I had to move my mother out of the house I went throu
gh his desk, which I’d never done before, and I found several envelopes with small sums of money in them saying things like ‘Penny a day. Saved.’ ‘Sixpence a week. Saved.’ He never seemed to have much money, but I remember a holiday when his wallet seemed full of clean pound notes. He could have got a much better job, better-paid, I mean. He was clever by ordinary standards, and very hard-working when he wasn’t ill.”

  “Ordinary clever people cause more bother than ordinary nincompoops. And you ought to know, with your education, that it was no use being clever and hard-working in the twenties if you were off sick half the time, like your dad. Now look here, you fool, you’ve got it all wrong. Your father worked for me right up to the day when I packed him off to fight for King and Country. We went through the Lab—I was a bit more senior by then, seeing I’d got my Prize—telling all the bright young fellows which uniform to go and die in. One chap, I remember, could ride a horse and of course he could do sums, so we detailed him for the Horse Artillery. Some of the mechanics were young enough, and I’d no use for your dad any more. I’d worked out that my line wasn’t going to come to anything till there were millions of quid to spend on it, and that kind of tin wasn’t going to be going with a war on. Tell you a rum thing—it’s in my book—they set up one of the experiments I had my eye on at Harwell getting on for fifty years later. Lot of fuss in the papers—scum of the earth, journalists—saying it meant Free Energy for Everyman. Cost ’em four million, and didn’t come to anything. I’d worked that out by then, too, on the back of an envelope. Cost me a ha’penny. But of course they wouldn’t consult me, not any longer. Damned little sensitive schoolgirls, frightened I’d tell ’em what ninnies they were. And that four million came out of taxes you paid, young Pibble. I only paid my ha’penny, and then it wasn’t wanted. What the devil are you staring at?”