Water seeps steadily across that side of the garden, flowing along channels that can be dammed with soil and diverted. The water is muddy brown, swirling. Light breaks through the leaves in slabs and is reflected in thick dollops on the muddy brown water. The water eddies and hesitates, finding a way, there is soiled froth on the surface. Matthews turns the soil with a sharp spade. We are there, in among the bushes, watching him. Tracking. The only piece of tracking she initiated. ‘Rhino’, she said, making her body go tense, creeping forward into the bushes, and I followed. We tracked rhino and we tracked each other, trying to surprise each other, get a sort of vantage point. Difficult in the thick dry bushes, the crackling grass, difficult to steal up on another person without being heard. That was late in the summer. After a long succession of rainless days. We ended up together in the heart of the bushes, suppressing our laughter in case Matthews heard us. We had planned to come out at that point, emerge, but Matthews was there before us and we didn’t feel like crawling out in his full view, so we sat close together, no she was kneeling, sleeveless tennis-dress, her slender but vigorous sun-tanned arms, delicate hairs on the forearms faintly burnished in the light and her vivid laughing face turned towards me in the shadow of the slithery laurel leaves, putting on an expression of mock alarm, sitting back on her heels, and I was aware in one fleeting second but for ever of the life in her, the vibrant stalk of her body, the long arch of her neck and the small breasts under her white tennis-dress. She had taken off her white headband and her hair fell forward over her brows. This is what is called a compromising situation, she said, with the usual teasing smile, and I didn’t know what to say to her. I have challenged Henry and Frederick to a game of tennis, she said. We two against them. Will you be my partner? My look must have told her that I would do anything for her, be anything she asked, my face must have said this, for she laughed, but differently, and I think more shyly, and she looked away, back through the bushes to where Matthews turned the soil with his spade. The wet spade gleamed, soil and small stones briefly glittered in falling. The water slowly sidled round, flowed heavily into light. The garden between Matthews and us, the flower-beds beyond the lawn were awash, light flexible and thick on the water. Drops from the spade flung glittering across the sunlight …
Let’s get back, we’d better get back this way. Don’t want old Matthews to see us, do we? He’d jump to the wrong conclusions right away, old Matthews would. We crawled through the bushes again, going now laterally across the garden. Dusty and dishevelled with the dust and pollen of summer in nostrils and throats, relaxed with so much laughter, we crawled out into the open and I looked up and saw Mooncranker in his white clothes standing elegant above us, and Miranda’s face darkened, caution came into it when she looked up and saw him, standing there silent and smiling, as a person might stand at a foxhole patiently waiting for the animal to emerge.
I think he saw us go in and stood waiting there. I can remember no speech from anyone on that occasion, only my sense of being somehow detected in a wrong act or at least somehow caught out. We stood there guilty before Mooncranker. That was after he gave me the little effigy of Christ swathed in white bandage and tied to a cross of lathe: a piece of deduction on my part, because I have no sure way of relating those events, but I remember the guilt I experienced, standing there rubbing dusty hands on grey flannel trousers, the guilt comes off the memory like a wave, a hot wave of guilt mingled with the smell of hot leaves and the sweeter smell of summer dust we bore on our persons from in among the bushes. I could measure the summer through my accessibility to guilt. At the commencement I see myself as free from it, quite whole, then as the summer progresses I fall prey to creeping guilt, symptom of my festering interior condition. So this guilt was immediate, unerring. But there was more to it than that, I fancy. I should not have felt so discomfited, if Mooncranker had not already given me the Christ; established between us that sort of intimacy, donor and recipient. No, he had already given it to me then, not much before, obviously, just a few days probably, as it had not yet started to rot, not yet drawn my attention to it by any obvious decomposition. No, it was still a wonder to me, evidence, if anything, of Mooncranker’s interest in me, desire for my spiritual welfare. It was there, in my secret bower, hanging above eye level on the trunk of the silver birch tree. Did Mooncranker know of this place? Did he count on my hanging up the Christ there? Certainly in the house someone else might easily have noticed it before me, exclaimed in horror, taken it and thrown it away perhaps, so Mooncranker’s intention, and there must have been an intention, some motive, I mean he wanted to inflict something on me for reasons of his own, I must believe that, what is the alternative? Mooncranker’s intention was that I should hang it up in my secret place. In a house the whole thing might have misfired.
Was it she that he spoke to just before he came across the lawn towards me carrying the gift? Someone who came down the stairs quickly, the interval between the glimpse at the landing and the sound of Mooncranker’s voice very small. Someone dressed in white, as from tennis …
How marvellously she played. There was a natural grace and concentration in her movements. She had shown talent two years before, had been coached by a professional, had already been selected to play in the junior county team. There was a sweep and rhythm in her play that I had not seen before in anybody and when she was on court she was absolutely ruthless, absolutely set on winning. I had already watched her in action against Alan, who was a stylish but desultory player with a very hard service. I see the mica in the surface of the courts shine and twinkle, the white lines gleam, Miranda’s body, arms and legs in a flurry of controlled motion. That was the day he gave me it, the very afternoon of the day when we beat Henry and Frederick, our triumph. On the lawn she announced it, in the middle of the morning, we were having tea – they drank tea in that house, morning and afternoon, almost never coffee. I think Uncle George had some theory about coffee being a debilitating drink, anyway it was almost never served and this morning it was tea as usual, Aunt Jane made it. I see her in pale pink with a tray, her long face benign and humourless. Uncle George was there too, it must have been Saturday. He said, ‘Miranda wants you to be her partner for doubles,’ looking at me in the curious way he had, quite affable but suspicious too, as if everything he found out about me confirmed him in the belief that I was an odd and discreditable person. They all looked at me and I think Henry or perhaps it was Frederick laughed, and I heard Miranda’s voice saying, ‘We’ll take Henry and Frederick on,’ and afterwards jokes and exclamations, but Aunt Jane’s face never changed.
It was that afternoon that he came up to me, Mooncranker, quite out of the blue, sauntering up with the white gift in his hands. He spoke to someone on the way, he stopped just near the house to speak to someone, then he came over to me. Smiling. He inclined his body forward courteously and said some words, like, please accept this gift, or, I’d very much like you to have this small token. I was very touched that Mooncranker should have studied my tastes, found out about my interests. It struck me at the time as almost incredible that he should have bothered to do so. I went and hung it up on the tree in my secret place. Just above eye level, just at adoration level, where the broken sunlight came through in strips and blocks and patterned the gauzy figure. At times a radiant light played around the helmeted head.
The evidence of my guilty dreams must have been noted in due course – perhaps by Aunt Jane though I don’t know if she would have recognized such signs, too delicate a clue for her detective powers, noted anyway by someone and reported to Uncle George, because one day he stopped me and said, ‘Don’t abuse your body, laddie, never do that. Your body, he said, ‘in its natural state, that is a state of health, is a marvellous instrument but it can be misused just like anything else and quite frankly, between you and me, you seem in a fair way to doing just that.’
I didn’t at first and for quite a long time know quite what he was getting at. The almost frantic guilt and evasivenes
s which his single glance filled me with was more than I could bear almost, and I thought, is he talking about my walk with Miranda, my sentimental objection to shooting voles, my unmanly recourse to dictionaries, my sneaky slicing shots at tennis? Any or all of these might be implicit in his pale-eyed regard. Where did this talk take place? I have a vague recollection of standing in a room somewhere, while Uncle George spoke to me thus. He always spoke to me indoors, and Mooncranker always spoke to me out. Between them, as it seems to me now, they covered every eventuality. Yes, we were indoors, possibly he had cornered me in the kitchen and the more I think of it the more I think it probably was the kitchen, because there was a bluebottle buzzing and a steamy, resonant buzzing it was, yes the kitchen, with Uncle George and I standing not too close together, possibly divided by the kitchen table.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I fear you will be an also-ran if you don’t watch it. Since your parents are having this spot of bother and you are far from home I consider myself in loco parentis, I have two of my own after all, I know what boys are. Now listen, don’t weaken yourself. You have got a vital flame inside you, but that flame will flicker and it may go out altogether, if you tamper with your body. Leaving you drained and debilitated. If you feel in danger of being overwhelmed, there is one thing you can do, I told this to my own boys and you can see that they aren’t stunted weaklings. If you – let’s be frank, we’re men of the world, if you feel yourself stiffening, it is while you have the stiffness that you feel the urge to waste yourself, just you imagine a great anvil lowering down from the sky, a blacksmith’s anvil slowly being lowered on to your crotch, you just imagine this massive weight pressing down on your equipment and you will start shrinking and the danger will be past. You just concentrate on the anvil my boy and you will find it therapeutic, yes I venture to say that you will find it makes a big difference. So I want you to promise me that next time you are in that position you will just try visualizing the anvil.’
I promised, I suppose. I found it difficult to look Uncle George in the face, once I had caught his drift. Shifty little beggar he probably thought me. But whether I promised or not I don’t think I tried out the anvil that summer. Not because I was not visited by remorse and fear: I was. But now they were mingled with pleasurable excitement, the remorse had become an integral pang. So it was not the season for anvils. At first, when I was assailed with awful fear of dissolution, then might have been the time for anvils …
I walk through the garden. Again I am in danger of drowning or suffocation as I penetrate the denser vegetation. I am on my way to the shrine. Matthews has creosoted the toolshed and the smell of the creosote fresh and pungent lies over the whole area, like some rough and liberally applied disinfectant, like something daubed on a wound, and this smell of creosote mingles with the sweet smells of summer, and always afterwards I am to associate certain conjunctions of odours, the smell of tar and rank late summer flowers, with stealth and urgency.
One hasty glance upward at Christ in his bandage, at the white arms held from embracing by their bonds, the blind helmeted head on which the sun gleams. I catch the gauzy glints of flies’ wings around him, and a muted buzzing, before sinking to my knees and unbuttoning myself while the slow swarm of accustomed images settles round me and my penis stiffens in my hot hands and I begin my curiously patient hieratic pattern of caresses, persevering in this until I am brimming and a touch injudicious brings me to the brink, forbearing becomes too impossibly difficult and I make the one decisive move which brings me off in shuddering spasms, grimacing face skyward pointing. I open my eyes on silence and the white figure on the tree. In the desolation that ensues I note more coldly the flies and the glintings and murmurings, there are too many flies and so I pull myself to my feet and cover my limp contrite offender and walk nearer the tree and look up. Which sense first is violated how can I now remember? There is an intensity of purpose in these hoverers – some have settled. I see a blue fly run along the rim of a bandage fold, duck under and disappear, reappear farther on. The smell I notice now, detachable at last from the complex odours of the garden, particular, local, deadly, the smell of animal decomposition, and now, probably a second or two later there is revealed to my more discerning, more horrified scrutiny, a movement, a frill or gentle lift along the line of the bandage, not caused by any fly, but the movement of Christ’s body inside the folds of bandage, they are white too, which is perhaps why further scrutiny is needed before I discern the greyish, wax-coloured maggots seething within the containing bandage and realize with a rising dizziness that his body is rotting, a dark pink mess of substance, seen in seams between the folds, and in this moment of nausea and insight I perceive that this body is minced-up meat, he has been fashioned in meat. By Mooncranker. With this knowledge my identity departs from me. There is a roaring which threatens to come nearer and a sort of sponginess in my vision. I succeed in walking several steps and I am there at the exit point, gulping in the heavy air, facing out across the garden, about to escape, when Uncle George, in his red track suit, comes bursting through the shrubbery, head up and mouth wide open, arms working like pistons. He bursts through the bushes and comes running past me, looking neither to right nor left, knees raised, one two, one two, disappears briefly beyond the orchard, but before I can move he is round again on the other side and even at this distance I can hear his harsh tormented breath. He is doing his twenty times round the garden. I can see his labouring face blindly raised, his open noisy mouth and suddenly he is a part of the awful thing happening to Christ behind me in the shade, and it is happening to me too because of my Solitary Vice and Uncle George is fleeing from it round and round the garden. The sponginess gets flecked with red, the roaring engulfs me. All the different persons I have been merge into an awful perception of what I am. I fall backwards, flat on my back, in a dead faint …
5
He was now experiencing a definite desire to visit the lavatory. Sensing some slight activity on the neighbouring bed he looked across. Mooncranker’s head on the pillow was turning from side to side, very slowly, as if striving to avoid leisurely blows or memories. Perhaps he was in the throes of a dream. Farnaby sat up and swung his legs down to the ground.
‘This plasma,’ Mooncranker said suddenly and clearly. His eyes had opened again. He said, ‘You are a strong boy Farnaby.’
Farnaby stood up. ‘I’m just going to find the loo,’ he said.
‘This plasma,’ Mooncranker said, ‘contains indispensable materials. If it is diminished beyond a certain point, the vital salts suffer a weakening of function. Exhaustion and death ensue.’
Farnaby moved slowly towards the door, nodding his head, to show that he was following these words.
‘Treatment is by infusion into the veins of water, chloride solutions, sugar. Stay a minute Farnaby, don’t rush away, dear boy. I want you to go and get her for me.’
‘Go and get her?’ Farnaby repeated, looking at Mooncranker with a face of surprise.
‘I know exactly where she has gone.’
It took Farnaby some moments longer fully to realize that Mooncranker was talking about the secretary again. ‘Oh I don’t think I could do that,’ he said.
‘There is a pool in Western Anatolia,’ Mooncranker said, looking up steadily at the ceiling. ‘Near a town called Denizli. A thermal pool with a sort of hotel built round it. People go there for their health, you know. And for other reasons too, of course. The water is believed to contain medicinal properties. It is on the site of a very ancient city, which attracts the historically minded. An interesting place. I have my reasons for thinking she has gone there. I want you to go and bring her back.’
‘But she may not be there at all.’
‘She’s there all right. I should pay all expenses of course, for a reasonable period, say three or four days. It may take you that long to persuade her.’
‘I must go to the lavatory,’ Farnaby said. The unexpectedness of Mooncranker’s request seemed to have intensified his n
eed. ‘We’ll discuss it when I get back,’ he said. He glanced back once as he stepped outside, but Mooncranker’s profile was grave, composed. It was not very likely, in the few minutes that he was going to be out of the room, that Mooncranker would start behaving indecorously.
Outside, however, in the brightly lit, completely empty corridor, he did not know which way to go. The room he had just left was about two-thirds of the way along, so he decided to turn right and go down the shorter part of the corridor, with a vague idea of not straying too far from Mooncranker and his stricken blood plasma. White globes, set at exact intervals in the ceiling, shed along the corridor a shadowless, absolutely unvarying light, visual equivalent of protracted monotone shriek or howl, extending to the glass double doors at the end. Underfoot, rubbery beige floor-covering partially deadened the sound of his steps. Appalled by the vista of glazed light, he glanced at the white doors which succeeded one another on either side. Some had numbers on them, some not. Surmising that the numbered rooms might be wards or private rooms for patients, he tried an unnumbered door and found himself staring into a long narrow room, with an overhead strip-light, piles of white linen stacked in shelves up the walls. He retreated hastily from this, feeling more agitated than before. Now he was nearing the end of the corridor.
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