The Alteration

by Kingsley Amis

  'A pleasant and distinguished evening,' said Mirabilis with an air of contentment.

  Further sniffs and snorts.

  'That young priest, Dilke: I must confess I didn't care for him at first, but he has more depth than I suspected.'

  'H'm. H'm.'

  'Does something trouble you, Wolfgang?' Parts of marriage must be rather like this, thought Mirabilis.

  'No. Nothing.'

  'Tell old Fritz about it.'

  Viaventosa was a fat bewigged shape in the watery moonlight. 'There's a boy asleep somewhere in that place,' he squeaked after a moment. 'An ordinary English boy, with all his boyish dreams. No doubt he pictures himself journeying to Mexico to win the hand of the Emperor's daughter, or rescuing a Christian princess from the Turks...'

  'No doubt he does, Wolfgang.'

  'And steps are about to be taken which will confound those dreams for ever.'

  'Really, very few English boys can hope to win the-'

  'Please, Fritz. His youth is to vanish, with his manhood, and his humanity. He'll be what we are, a gelding, an ox, a wether, a capon.'

  'And a singer at the summit of his profession, a—'

  'Not as great as Velluti. No one could match Velluti.'

  'Shame on you, Wolfgang: your grandfather could not have heard Velluti.'

  'My great-grandfather did, as a young boy. I told you before.'

  'Be done with your great-grandfather, and with Velluti. We talk of Anvil, and I say he'll be admired, deferred to, welcome wherever he wishes to go, above all possessed of something more valuable than any crown: to have as the centre of his life the delight that comes from the exercise of skill.'

  'There are other things more valuable than crowns, and other delights.'

  'How can you know?'

  'I can't know, but I have eyes and ears. And feeling.'

  'I share it, my dear: you know that.'

  'H'm. H'm.'

  Your feeling is too much for yourself at this moment, thought Mirabilis, but what he said, in a gentle tone, was, 'What did you think of the boy's piano-forte studies? Some of those modulations were too violent for me, in spite of what Morley said. Oh, the days are gone when music was supposed to sound pleasant...'

  At St Cecilia's, the next day was one of leisure. According to Decuman, this was actually a device for extracting more work from the inmates than usual: morning studies began with a solid two hours of Latin during which (so he said afterwards) the preceptors behaved as if all knowledge of that tongue were about to be removed from their minds the moment the bell sounded, and they must convey everything they could before it struck. Church history was similarly accelerated, with popes, idolaters, martyrs, heretical bishops jostling one another across the scene like characters in an extravaganza. Forenoon choir-schooling sternly eschewed anything that could be called music and set the clerks to struggle with uncouth intervals or eccentric time-signatures. But, with dinner, the march of instruction halted; Hubert, for instance, was to have the afternoon to himself until his private hour with Master Morley at five o'clock.

  Activity on the dormitory floor was intense but almost silent: a reckless guffaw or yell was apt to draw the attention of a monitor and lead, perhaps, to a withdrawal of leisure-privilege. So it was in a kind of bursting mutter that Thomas invited Hubert to join him, Decuman and Mark in an expedition to a pool where there were supposed to be trout, and in a similiar mode that Hubert conveyed his thanks and regrets—he had to write letters to his family, he said. But, as the other three did, he changed from chapel dress to the garb permitted for the leisure hours of leisure days: coloured cotton shirt, a furious indulgence for those limited on all occasions to white, and, in theory, to spotless white at that; loose trousers reaching to the ankle, an escape no less precious to habitual wearers of breeches and stockings; and rubber-soled canvas shoes instead of the constant polished leather.

  Decuman gave Hubert a perhaps over-cordial buffet on the shoulder and led his fishing-party from the room. All the way down the tiled corridor to the stairhead, the receding swish and squeak of rubber could be heard, diversified by the recurrent bang of a door, smothered giggle and louder shushing. Soon there was silence but for a creak or two of woodwork as the building warmed up in the sun. It was a hot day for the time of year: from the dormitory window, Hubert had a view of grass and treetops, shining almost yellow in the strong light, and caught a stray sparkle from the distant spires of Oxford. For some time he stared without blinking, without looking except vaguely. The waxed windowshelf was warm and moist under his hand. His writing materials were in his desk in the day-room on the ground floor, but when at last he moved it was through the momentary coolness of the tiny stone-paved hall of that part of the building and out into the sunshine.

  He crossed the courtyard and went through the arch under the Abbot's lodging. In the farrier's shop, the ring of beaten metal could be heard; otherwise, the various offices seemed asleep or empty. Hubert paused at the carp-pond and peered through the shifting glare at the mud-coloured mass that showeditself only now and then, for a moment, to be a crowd of individual fish. When the time came, each and all of them would vanish down the gullets of hungry folk at dinner or supper in the Chapel refectories. That was not shocking, or rather it ceased to be so on consideration. Human beings had absolute God-given rights over dumb creatures; it was part of the principle on which the world worked. Less extremely but no less strictly, it applied to divisions within mankind: Christians and Mahometans, clergy and laity, gentry and people, men and women, fathers and children.

  At the dove-cote, Hubert paused again. Coos, flutterings and a good deal of activity on foot carried between them an air of urgency, of resources strained near their limits, though whether in the direction of disaster or triumph it was, as always, quite unclear. Then, slowly, head lowered, he entered the farmyard. The duck-pond here was far less grand than the carp-pond, being nothing but a large hole full of dirty water; on the other hand, it had ducks on it and near it, dozens of them, far too many for more than a fraction to benefit from the scraps of bread he had saved from refectory. While he was doling these out, Smart the collie bounded up to him. The growls he made meant only that here came somebody of rank and mark, and soon changed into grunting noises that meant that somebody of rank and mark was being affable to somebody less well placed. After a few moments of this, Hubert heard an uncertain step on the stretch of dried mud between him and the main pasture. He looked up and saw approaching a calf he had become slightly acquainted with over the past few weeks. It (he had not discovered the animal's sex) was mostly white, with a large black patch on one flank and two smaller ones thrown as if at random on to its face, giving it a clownish look. With many a protestation of friendship, Hubert went up to it step by step. He had not reached it when it backed, wheeled away and trotted on to the grass, but it had let him come at least a yard nearer than last time. If he had been a country lad he would have known what to offer—a carrot, a handful of hay—as a token of good will; since he was not, good will itself and patience would have to serve, but serve they surely must in the end.

  Calling to Smart to follow, he walked at the same slow pace as before along the edge of the pasture and reached the foot of a long bright slope overgrown with furze and heather. Smart did follow as far as here, but no further, which was quite right, because he belonged to the farm. Hubert moved on. Every dozen paces he turned his head and found the dog in the same position as before, looking at him alertly and yet blankly, until all at once he was nowhere to be seen.

  At the top of the slope a wood began. It must have been there for a long time, to judge by the trunks of the trees, which were thick and bulging and quite often split, and by the fact that some of the taller ones had spread their boughs so densely as to keep out the sun in patches. This was still Chapel land, the source of fuel for the ovens, and rabbits, pigeons and partridges for the refectory tables. Hubert had no wish for company that afternoon; he settled himself in a thicket with
his back against an ivy-covered stump and stared at the irregular tiers of foliage, some of them brilliant with reflected light, most of them in shadow, all of them hardly moving in the still air.

  After a few minutes, what Hubert had been keeping at the back of his mind—so far back that none of it had any pitch or duration: it was more like a buried memory—rose all at once to his attention and began to gather shape. But the shape would not come right, not everywhere. There were two melodies that immediately and necessarily involved the same harmonic structure, but they would not fit within it together, and each resisted alteration to make it conform with its fellow. Both in turn proved impossible to drive out. Hubert frowned and sweated and began to feel the passing of time. What he had so nearly grasped was on the point of slipping away from him when the third melody appeared and, in the act of doing so, revealed itself as the air on which the other two were variations. The sooner, perhaps, for having been held in check by his discreditable slow-wittedness, there came to mind the outline of two further variations and a central episode in the tonic minor. Should he write out the whole piece and win Master Morley's praise for his apparent diligence, or produce only half and save himself thought for the next half-week?

  He was considering this point, not very actively, when he heard voices approaching along the path that ran within a few yards of his nest in the thicket. An instinct implanted by experience at St Cecilia's and elsewhere made him stay where he was and keep quiet: in this deep shade, he would be likely to be seen from the path only if he were being looked for. The voices came closer, turned into a chuckle and a giggle, went past him a little way and stopped. Then, through birdsong and the hum of insects, he heard a faint rhythmical murmur as of someone pleasantly half-asleep. It ceased, and two people, bending low, came into his view twelve or fifteen feet away at the far end of a sort of accidental tunnel of greenery, and stayed there.

  Hubert recognised one of them as Ned, the brewer's boy who supplied Thomas with TR. Ned's companion was a girl, but it was difficult to be certain of anything beyond that because, as they knelt face to face, his arm and shoulder and head were so much in the way. They were kissing, though the word seemed wrong, inadequate to their energy and single-mindedness, to the greed or desperation with which they clung to each other, as if trying to display a fear of being parted for the rest of their lives. Were they playing a game?

  When Ned's hand pushed at the girl's bosom through her clothes, Hubert pretended to himself not to notice; when the hand went beneath the clothes, he drew in his breath with a wince; when they were gone and she was bare to the waist, he forgot about breathing. Then they both sank to where his eye could not follow them, and he panted a few times to recover air. What Decuman had described more than once to an incredulous, rather appalled Hubert was about to happen, or was already happening. Why? How could it? This was Ned, somebody he knew, somebody who had never shown the least sign of wanting to behave like this or being capable of it. Hubert was excited, aware of but not attentive to a stirring in his body, absorbed and full of guilt and dread.

  Very soon, Ned rose to his feet, still fully clothed, and moved behind a bush with thick, broad leaves on it. Then the girl sat up; without being able to see, Hubert knew she had all her clothes off now. He had a clear sight of her face for the first time, and stared at it hard, eager for some clue. Whether she was beautiful or ugly or anything between quite passed him by. She was looking over at Ned with an expression Hubert strove to read. He thought he made out what he found hard to believe could be there: dejection, defeat, pleading, and a fixity that suggested to him that her mind was on other things. But that last was surely impossible.

  Ned came back with nothing on and Hubert did not look at him. In a moment, the pair had again disappeared below the level of his view, and again there was silence but for the noises of the woods. For the first time Hubert felt embarrassed, but this did not last long because his head was too full of questions without answers. He would understand when he was older, Decuman had said. Would he? Did they?

  From the ground those few feet away Hubert heard a voice cry out, but so strangely that he was never able, either then or afterwards, to decide whose voice it had been. And what did it express? Relief? Astonishment? Triumph? Despair? Not despair. Pain? No, not pain. Pleasure, then. It must be pleasure: Decuman had laid great stress on that. All this would be something to tell him and the others when the candles were relit that night, something to discuss, something he had that they had not. And yet that would be wrong. Indeed (it occurred to him with sudden force), watching and listening these last ten minutes, being here at all, had been wrong, wrong enough to be a sin. He had seen earlier no alternative to remaining hidden, nor did one occur to him now, but that did not make it any less of a sin: teaching was very firm on such points. What was this a sin of? Impurity was a safe guess. So, although he did not feel impure (in fact rather the contrary, if his desire to forget what he had seen and heard was to be considered), he muttered some words of contrition and then, more and more drowsily, an unknown number of Hail Marys.

  Hubert waited for some minutes, still drowsily, until Ned and the girl had put on their clothes and moved out of earshot. Then, distant but clear, he heard the St Cecilia's clock strike four and jumped up, startling a large grey bird which startled him with the abrupt whir of its wings. Master Morley would have to be satisfied with, at best, Theme and Variations i and 2. Theme... For a moment Hubert's mind was quite empty. In deep dismay, he checked his stride and abruptly, without any thought, laid his hand on his chest just below the base of the throat. The moment soon passed and the piece was there again, exactly as it had been. But nothing like that had happened to him before.

  He reached the edge of the wood and was at once calmed by what lay below him: the uncultivated slope, the pasture and its herd, the farm buildings, the Chapel in the form of an H with its upper half closed. What had happened in the wood was over, and had never been anything but senseless and on its own.

  Chapter Two

  Master Tobias Anvil's house stood on the north side of Tyburn Road near its junction with Edgware Road. A generation ago, this had been in effect the north-western corner of London, with Bayswater Station, the railtrack departure-point for the capital, to be seen across open fields. But nowadays, with the population of the city well above the million mark, manufactories were springing up round the advantageous station site, and the dwellings of the people came with them. It was forecast that, within another generation, London would extend as far as the former villages-now the thriving small towns—of Kilburn and Shepherd's Bush. Already, those among the gentry who felt or professed a disdain for city life had begun to settle down by the river in Fulham and on the northern heights of Hampstead.

  For the moment, Master Anvil was very well content to stay where he was. The position was convenient. His express took him to the consular district round St Giles's Palace in no more than five minutes, to his counting-house by Bishopsgate in well under fifteen. (It was alleged by his enemies that the much closer proximity of Tyburn Tree was an attraction, but this must have been malice or humour, since no felon had been executed there since 1961, and the last Act of Faith dated as far back as 1940.) The house itself had many points in its favour. Separated off from the highway by wrought-iron gates and a pair of lawns on which fountains played, it was an impressive three-storey building of Kentish ragstone with window-arches and chimneys of hand-moulded Reading brick. To the rear lay two and a half acres of garden in the Danish style, with large formal lily-ponds, an orangery and a small aviary. It had been built by the present occupant's grandfather about the year 1900 at a cost of nearly three thousand pounds, and today the whole property was valued at something not far short of three times that amount.

  The breakfast-room was sited at the south-eastern corner, of the house to catch the early sun, which, one fine morning in late May, gleamed and glinted with rare brilliance on the white-and-gilt furnishings. The scent of wallflowers and azaleas,
fresh-cut from the garden an hour before, mingled pleasantly with the odour of hot bread. Four persons sat at the long mahogany table: Master Anvil himself, his wife Margaret, their elder son Anthony, and Father Matthew Lyall, the family chaplain. Usually at this hour—eight o'clock—Tobias was about his business, but today he was expecting visitors, so could indulge himself with a third panino and honey, a fourth bowl of tea and an extended reading of the newspapers.

  He was forty-eight years old, thin and thin-faced, with abundant black hair reaching to his shoulders after the usage of his social condition. His grave demeanour, in particular the habitual intentness of his gaze, went with his taste for a plain, almost severe style of dress to give him something of a clerical aspect. His conduct was in keeping: few merchantmen were stricter in their observances, on better terms with the clergy in general, or— as was testified by the gold candlesticks and gold-threaded altar-cloth at St Mary Bourne, his parish church—more liberal with donatives. Lowering his black brows at the front page of the London Observer, the organ of the Papal Cure, he said in his clear, rather sing-song tones, 'The Turk announces his departure from Greece in 1980. This follows his sending his High Delegate to the obsequies of his late majesty.'

  'An encouraging development, master,' said Father Lyall, a chubby, youngish man whose upper lip was always dark no matter how closely he shaved.

  'Is it so, Father? Never forget that our adversary isn't bound by his word as Christians are. He means us to disarm ourselves to the point at which he may safely recross the Danube. Already his policy of "pacific concomitance" has had frightening effects. You must have seen that the Papal and Patriarchal forces along the north bank are to be reduced further. And I hear talk of a Bill to be laid before Convocation intended to diminish our own navy. The argument's familiar enough: why should we English exert ourselves in that quarter when Naples and Venice and Hungary do so little? How else are we to show the spirit of detensione? Liberal cant! I should very much like to know the number of secret Mahometan agents among our governors. Oh, this battle has continued for more than six hundred years, whether the state of affairs at any one time was called war or peace, and Christendom will never be safe until the Turk is thrown back by force into Asia and the Imperial Patriarchate restored at Constantinople.'