The Shift Key

by John Brunner

  What was that?

  Abruptly she was alert again. This latest case was nothing special, yet it seemed to have aroused the ire of one of the magistrates. For the moment, Jenny realized in horror, she’d forgotten who he was, apart from being a local bigwig. She was leafing frantically through her papers in search of today’s court schedule when memory came to her aid.

  Of course! How could she not know Basil Goodsir? Wasn’t he the person Vic Draycock kept accusing of planning to break up the library at Weyharrow Court?

  The magistrates were conferring with the clerk of the court, as was usual when they needed to know the extent of their legal powers. Why, though, should they do so for such a trivial case? A teenage boy was arraigned before them, charged with stealing a sheep from his father. The latter was estranged from his mother and now lived with another woman on the farm where the boy had been raised. The father’s evidence had been riddled with vindictiveness and contradictions, while the son’s defence had been – just a second … Jenny shuffled her notes, for she had taken down the last lot more or less subconsciously.

  Yes! It sprang back from lines of neat shorthand. His defence was that the sheep he was alleged to have stolen was one he had been given, a stray lamb he himself had tended and even named, that knew him and came when called. On any other day but Thursday the Chronicle might well have found space for it as a human-interest item …

  Turning, she caught the eye of a police constable who had earlier given evidence. They shrugged and smiled at one another, both at a loss to know why the magistrates were making heavy weather of a case that ought not to have been brought at all.

  And then, quite unexpectedly, Basil Goodsir exploded.

  Leaping to his feet, he roared, ‘He stole a sheep! That violates the sacred laws of property! I say he must be hanged, right now, in public!’

  His co-magistrates, and the clerk, strove in vain to quiet him.

  ‘I won’t be silent!’ he raved on. ‘Where in God’s name is the executioner? Take this wicked fellow out and hang him by the neck until he’s dead! Then let his body rot upon the gallows! To steal from your own son – I mean your father – is the most heinous crime conceivable! It’s worse than murder, worse than blasphemy!’

  An awed silence had by now pervaded the court, apart from certain officials who were conferring softly by the door through which the accused were brought in. By degrees even their voices hushed, and all eyes turned on Basil.

  Who gradually seemed to realize what he’d said.

  ‘But stealing sheep …’ he forced out under that massed accusing gaze. ‘I mean: it is a crime that calls for hanging, isn’t it? I mean: I know it is!’

  Dead pause.

  ‘Well, it always used to be …’

  ‘Adjourn!’ shouted the senior magistrate. ‘Adjourn! Get this court cleared!’

  Jenny did not obey the order, but sat white-faced with pencil poised above the next sheet of her notebook, convinced that what she had just heard was as chimerical as her memory of Hal Awnham’s speech last night.

  Coming up, the usher – who had grown friendly with her since she joined the Chronicle – said chaffingly, ‘Pity that’s too late to make the paper this week, isn’t it? I mean, what a story for you! “Local JP goes off his rocker in public! Demands death penalty for stealing sheep!”’

  ‘Even though you heard him say it,’ Jenny whispered, ‘even though everybody else did, too, I wouldn’t stand a prayer of making my editor believe it. Not after what I almost did to him this morning …’

  Jumping up, she went to drown her sorrows in a pint of lunch.

  But when she came back to the office, Ian Tenterwell met her with a brow like thunder.

  ‘Were you in court when Mr Goodsir lost his marbles?’

  ‘Of course!’ – raising one hand as to defend herself.

  ‘And you didn’t phone me right away?’

  ‘I thought you wouldn’t believe me!’ Jenny cried.

  ‘Christ!’ He seemed not to have heard. ‘We had a reporter on the spot and still we had to get the news from someone who phoned it in on spec! Christ, there would have been time to make the front page over! With so many witnesses …!’

  Drawing a deep breath, he clenched his fists.

  ‘Now, Jenny, you get one thing straight – once and for all! When I send you to cover a story I expect to get the story, clear? From this moment you’re back on probation! One more damned stupid cockup like the two you’ve managed so far today, and you’ll be out on your backside, hear me? And I don’t care how pretty it is! If you spent less time wiggling it at people and more time concentrating on your work, I’d not be saying this! Get back to work!’

  ‘I know all about it,’ Helen said composedly. Hearing her husband’s car ascend the gravel drive, she had ambushed him in the Court’s entrance hall.

  Pale, shaking, Basil confronted her. He said, ‘How?’

  ‘Marge Grewsam phoned me.’ She was the junior of his fellow magistrates. ‘By now it’s all over the county.’

  ‘I swear I don’t know what came over me!’ he moaned.

  Then it’s time you were told.’ Formal as a carving, she stood her ground. ‘I phoned Ralph Haggledon at once.’

  ‘Why in hell do I need a lawyer?’

  ‘You may think you don’t. I do! And a psychiatrist! I asked Ralph to bring one if he can.’

  ‘Helen –!’ Basil took a pace toward her. She warned him off with one hand, edge-on as though she knew karate.

  ‘You need treatment. Mental treatment. I’ve known it would come to this for years. So has your father, who despairs of you! So does our lazy-minded son for pity’s sake! He knows you’re off your rocker! You must be! To be born heir to one of the biggest estates in the west of England and spend every penny you could borrow against your expectations and still wind up over ears in debt – from drink, from gambling, from damn-fool “businesses” on which you lost your shirt … And now to claim in open court that sheep-stealers should be hanged –! You’ve had your chance and blown it, Basil dear. You’re going to be declared incompetent to manage your affairs … and mine!’

  ‘It’s a plot!’ Basil cried. ‘Hatched by you and Cedric and my nitwit of a father! You’ve been trying to get me put away for years –!’

  Outside, once more, there came the grinding sound of car-wheels.

  ‘That will be Ralph, and, very likely, the psychiatrist,’ said Helen with the sweetest of skeletal smiles. ‘If you hope to convince them that you aren’t off your head, you’d better start figuring out excuses. Marge said there was a reporter from the Chronicle in court. The paper comes out on Friday, doesn’t it? That’s tomorrow. Your time, my darling Basil, is running out!’

  She went to open the front door, leaving him to mutter over and over: ‘But it is a capital crime to steal a sheep. I’m sure it is. I’m sure, I’m sure, I’m sure … And I’m a magistrate, aren’t I?’

  For the first time since he’d had to hide from bullies at his boarding-school, Cedric was frightened. Kneeling beside Marmaduke’s wicker chair in the conservatory, he whispered, ‘Is my father really off his head?’

  The old man answered in a voice like creaking hinges. ‘If he wasn’t before he married your mother, she was enough to tip the balance.’

  ‘Does this imply she can get him put away and –?’

  ‘Enjoy his income, what’s left of it? Yes, I imagine that’s what she has in mind. Beyond that, of course, there’s the question of what I’m going to leave when I die.’ Marmaduke gave a dry chuckle. ‘But I’ve never liked her, you know. I only put up with her because she bore you. Let her get her claws on my estate? Never!’

  Cedric rocked back on his haunches. ‘You mean –?’

  ‘Oh, yes! It’s all entailed to you. According to the will she and Basil have seen, not until you’re twenty-one, next year. If I die first, that is. But to be on the safe side, when they changed the voting age to eighteen I made a codicil she doesn’t know about.
Nor does her precious Mr Haggledon, because I did it through a London lawyer. What she hopes to do, you see, is get her hands on the lot before you come of age, and time – she thinks – is running out. This aberration of your father’s is a godsend for her. She can’t revoke my sale of the freehold of the mill at Trimborne – which, by the way, I did to spite her – but … Where was I?’

  ‘So Dad was right to say it was a mistake? It could have yielded more if you’d sold them a lease?’

  ‘Of course it could.’ Marmaduke’s legs were wrapped in a blanket; he lifted one corner to wipe his bleary eyes. ‘But your father wasn’t fit to be trusted with a steady income. He’d inevitably have borrowed against it and wound up in a worse mess than before. Being already deep in debt, he and Helen leaned on me for urgent funds, offering as an excuse the need to meet your school-fees, so …’ An arthritic shrug.

  ‘You, though!’ he resumed with sudden energy. ‘You’re more like me, or Abel, or even Reverend Matthew who was so deluded when he thought the coincidence between our name and the nickname given to his new parish was a sign from heaven. It looks as though our family’s fortunes go in cycles … Where was I?’

  ‘Saying that I’m more like Abel and Matthew.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Marmaduke gathered his stiff old limbs into a tidier posture, refusing help from his grandson. ‘What I meant was … Ah, this worn-out brain of mine! What did I mean? I think you probably know.’

  ‘If Mum does get Dad put away, she won’t gain any benefit unless I let her.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  The staggering implications of those two brief words took a while to register in Cedric’s head. He said faintly, ‘You mean that if I wanted to I could turn this place into what she’d call a hippies’ haven?’

  Visions of countless nubile girls prepared to bare their breasts to summer sun, and doubtless lie down with whatever stranger offered them a bed, came and went in a flash. For Marmaduke was saying sternly, ‘That depends on whether I am dead! And whether, when I am, you will still want to!’

  For a second Cedric had been assuming that he was. He reproached himself … and suddenly found the whole affair so damned funny that he burst out laughing.

  ‘I’m right,’ his grandfather murmured.

  ‘What? I’m sorry! It just came over me!’ Cedric hauled himself to his feet.

  ‘Do you know something?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The last time I heard Basil laugh was so long ago I can’t remember. And I never heard him and Helen laughing together. That’s why I realized they weren’t fit to be trusted with the heritage.

  ‘You, though!’ – fixing Cedric with a spear-sharp gaze. ‘I can’t remember when I didn’t hear you laugh! From your cradle up! There haven’t been too many jokes in my life lately. But those there have, I think I owe to you.’

  For all such talk of laughter, the mood had grown abruptly solemn.

  ‘Now go away and mess up Helen’s plan,’ the old man said. ‘Walk in on them and make a scene. Have fun.’

  ‘You know,’ said Cedric slowly, ‘that’s exactly what I had in mind.’

  5

  There came yet another knock at the iron-studded oak door of the parsonage – a mansion too large, too gloomy for this modern age, and especially so for a widower like the Reverend Patrick Phibson.

  Sitting at the desk where he had been striving to draft a sermon, he buried his face in his hands. Would this ghastly day never end? It was already past five o’clock, and he had to take evensong at six.

  To confront his congregation again after this morning’s débâcle –! The prospect was unbearable, even though his memory of what he had said and done had receded to the vagueness of a dream. Yet it had been all too real!

  Moreover, people had spent all day descending on him like a plague of locusts, recounting fearful tales …

  ‘It’s the temporary doctor,’ said Mrs Judger from the doorway. She was his housekeeper, and had as usual been one of this morning’s few worshippers.

  In other words: she knew.

  Forcing himself to appear calm, Mr Phibson said, ‘Please show him in.’

  And, during the brief moment between her turning away and the doctor’s appearance, uttered another silent appeal for strength.

  ‘Dr Gloze! Come in, sit down! Let me offer you a glass of sherry!’

  Taking the chair the parson pointed at, the doctor shook his head.

  ‘Frankly,’ he said in a faint voice, ‘I’m afraid to touch anything that might disturb my mind worse than has already happened … Excuse me. I have no business intruding on you, especially since I’m not religious by conviction. It’s just that I have to talk to somebody!’

  He produced a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. He was in his late twenties, brownish-haired, clean-shaven, with a crop of freckles. He looked awful. Mr Phibson felt a stir of sympathy. He himself had been no older when he first took Orders.

  ‘I prescribe some nonetheless!’ he said heartily, and crossed to a corner table where, by force of a routine inherited from his predecessor, Mrs Judger daily filled a cut-crystal decanter and set four glasses next to it. Three of today’s were still clean.

  As he poured, he added over his shoulder, ‘In case you think it paradoxical for a parson to prescribe for a doctor, let me admit at once that I’ve been thinking seriously about paying you a call.’

  Steven tensed, accepting the drink and clutching the glass so tight it risked breaking. He said, ‘But after the stupid way I behaved this morning –’

  A wave cut the words short as Mr Phibson, his expression grave, sank into a facing chair.

  ‘I did too,’ he said. ‘And I think we might usefully compare experiences. You see, young fellow … I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound patronizing. We hadn’t met before last night, had we?’

  Steven shook his head dumbly.

  ‘Let me say how impressed I was with your no-nonsense manner. Obviously you realized at a glance that Mrs Lapsey is a self-pitying, self-glorifying fool. I don’t have to be a doctor to tell that she has a heart like a horse’s. Inside that scrawny frame it’s going to pound away for years. Lord, she’s buried three husbands!’

  Steven took a cautious sip of his sherry. He said, ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘Why should you? You’ve only been in Weyharrow a few days. Here’s how!’

  Mr Phibson emptied his glass at a draught and made to set it on a nearby table.

  But it was a bow-legged Victorian relic with a glazed top, and as glass touched glass there came a rattle and a clatter and a final slam. By the time he safely set it down his fingers, and his face, were drained of blood.

  It was Steven’s turn to offer comfort. Hunching forward in his chair, he said, The last patient I saw today said something about –’

  ‘About my having taken leave of my senses?’ Mr Phibson suggested bitterly. ‘Yes, it seems that during morning service – repeating something I’ve done literally daily since I was ordained, bar variations due to the changing of the calendar – I made an utter fool of myself! And yet …’ He clasped his hands together. ‘And yet I knew as I was doing it that it was right! It was as though I were living a dream. Everything was different. Everything –’

  Checking, he looked at his visitor.

  ‘I heard something about you from Mr Ratch. Forgive me for inquiring. But was it similar?’

  Steven nodded miserably.

  ‘Even down to it being as remote as though I’d dreamed it all. I couldn’t believe what I’d done until I looked up the note I’d written on Mr Cashcart’s file. And then the whole horror of it overcame me! You see, I was so eager to make good down here! I’ve been surviving in locum posts since I graduated. I don’t want to go back into the kind of hospitals I trained in, in search of a consultancy. I’d rather be an ordinary GP. And I’d set my sights on a country practice like this one. This seemed to be a chance, a better one than I ever had before. And now I’ve cocked it up – Oh, excus
e my language!’

  Mr Phibson rose to pour more sherry for them both. Resuming his chair, he said, ‘I feel much the same. There was one mischief-maker in this morning’s congregation who took it on himself, or herself, to phone my archdeacon, who then phoned me. Unless I can plead my way out of it, I could find myself arraigned before an ecclesiastical court. What an end that would be to my career, undistinguished though it may have been!’

  Steven, cradling his glass, blinked in amazement.

  ‘Do they still do that sort of thing? I mean, heresy trials and all that?’

  ‘I assure you they do. This Church of ours isn’t called “established” without reason. But – Ah, you said you’re not religious.’

  Steven hesitated. At length he muttered, sounding embarrassed, ‘I lost my faith when I first had to tend an injured baby. She was in a car that crashed and caught on fire. She went on crying till her strength was spent, and then she died.’

  ‘Hearing you say that,’ said Mr Phibson, ‘brings to mind not so much the heretical beliefs that this morning I felt convinced my congregation shared, as the conclusion I find myself being driven to this evening, concerning the all-too-concrete reality of evil as a Power.’ He contrived to make the capital letter audible. ‘I plan to address that subject at evensong, and again on Sunday when I can expect a somewhat larger – ah – audience … But you didn’t come to hear my plaints. It is clear that you are deeply troubled. Though a weak unworthy vessel, can I help?’

  Gazing at the carpet, Steven said, ‘Did Mr Ratch explain exactly what I did?’

  ‘He said something about telling someone – let me see – to plunge his hand into a new-killed chicken.’

  ‘That’s correct.’ Steven drained his glass with a gesture like a blow to an enemy. ‘Later, though, I remembered where I got it from! It’s real!’

  Mr Phibson stared. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It isn’t a real treatment for arthritis! But it was! It was prescribed for Schumann! I was listening to a concert on Radio 3 yesterday, and the fact was mentioned. That’s what made me think of it when Mr Cashcart turned up! But how on earth I could have been so – so deluded … That’s what I can’t understand!’