The Alteration

by Kingsley Amis

  'What would you know?'

  Hubert said quickly, 'What happens when you fuck? What do you do?'

  'You don't hear nothing to that of me, you don't.' The boy's tone was startled, but not hostile. 'Nor speak and rue wasn't never my proceeding, no. That Prefect would hear.'

  'Don't tell me who or where or when-just what, no more. Nothing for the Prefect to hear.'

  'Find another, little sir. Ask another, eh?'

  'I ask you. But I lose my time: you can tell me nothing. You haven't done it. Well, I win my sixpence back off Thomas-he wagered you had.'

  'By Christ, that I have,' said Ned angrily. 'Here it is, now. I grapples her and I near kiss her bloody mouth off the face of her and I gropes the cunt of her till her's all stewed and ready, see? Then I haves the clouts of her and I lays the fusby on her back and I shove my pen all the way up her fanny artful and I bang and bang, see?' For a moment longer, he appeared to Hubert angrier than ever, the corners of his mouth drawn tightly back as he puffed out the words. 'I goes on at her cruel till my knob start to whack her tripes and her cry me mercy, see? Then I feel a start to... Christ, I could...'

  Hubert, who had been watching his face, caught sight of the distension at the crotch of his trews just before Ned snatched at it and squeezed it, wincing loudly as if in pain; his body was bent at the waist. Within a couple of seconds Hubert had reached the top of the ladder and begun going down it as fast as he could. He heard Ned run across the floor above him.

  'Ah, would you? Let the fucking Prefect hear, would you? I'll stop your mouth, I will. Tear your fucking head off I will, little sir. I gets my hands to you, you wish you never been born, I swear to Christ.'

  With his pursuer close behind and still shouting, Hubert reached the ground and ran for the doorway. He was through it, but he would be caught in seconds. Then Ned's footfalls stopped abruptly, and at the same time Hubert saw the bulky figure of the brewer approaching from the arch that led to the courtyard, a curved piece of metal pipe balanced over his shoulder. Hubert hurried in the other direction. He only stopped gasping and trembling when he had reached the farmyard and Smart had rushed across to greet him. Today the collie had perhaps had an unusually good dinner; at any rate, he put himself out to entertain Hubert with a display of fierce growls and pretended snaps at his sleeves. When he left it was at top speed, to show that there were other tasks calling for his attention.

  Hubert stood and looked in the direction of the ducks on and round the pond. At a now reduced rate, phrases moved through his head: Ned was mad, Ned was not mad but had only wanted to fuck when there was no girl, Ned was rude and low, Ned might be rude and low but he had been telling the truth, Ned was only a boy, Ned was indeed a boy but in the one important way he was a man too. There were other phrases besides.

  A hoof sounded on dried mud. The white-and-black calf came up and halted just a few paces off; Hubert moved towards it with the utmost caution. Soon he was near enough to stretch out his hand at an inch a second and lay his fingertips on the hide of the animal's nose. It shifted its footing, but did not turn or edge away. By degrees, he moved further until he was standing at its shoulders with his hand on the back of its neck. There was an interval while he sent a hurried prayer to St Francis to see to it that no duck should quack too loudly or make a flurry in the pond. Then, after a gentle blowing through its nostrils and a few shakes of its head, the calf pressed its cheek against his chest; he lowered his own cheek on to its neck.

  A minute or so later, a questioning moo was heard from the pasture. As if by prearrangement, Hubert straightened himself and the calf trotted off; contentedly, he watched it out of sight. Only now did he remember The Ore Awakes: he must have dropped it somewhere in the brewery. Well, there was no going back for it. Should he walk on up to the woods? No: if he did, he would have to think about what he had seen there the previous week, to compare that with what he had seen just how and as much as he had understood of what he had been told, and from all this to try to imagine himself in Ned's case, and he shied away from such a task. He would go instead to the study-room and write out the little improwisazione he had thought of coming up in the rapid.

  While the clock was striking five, he carried the completed manuscript across a corner of the quadrangle to the small concert-chamber where composition was usually taught. The ceiling and four wall-panels had been painted with scenes from the life of St Cecilia, including what was now known to be her unhistorical martyrdom in the year 230. The artist was supposed to have been a mid-eighteenth-century Prefect of Music at the Chapel, and although it was also supposed, or at least hoped, that he had been a better musician than artist, most folk enjoyed what he had painted. Hubert did; as he mounted the low platform and sat down at one of the two piano-fortes there, he gave the figure of the saint's husband, known to generations of clerks as 'the tipsy Roman', an affectionate glance. Raising the lid of the instrument, he began to play the Prometheus Variations, Beethoven's last complete keyboard work. It would never do to be caught tinkling some trash of one's own.

  Presently, Master Morley hurried in, his footfalls heavy on the wide elm boards. Hubert stopped playing and stood up.

  'My excuses, Clerk Anvil: the organer kept me at the oratory. Now what have you for me today?'

  'Here, master.'

  At his work-desk to one side of the platform, Morley turned over the sheets of music-paper at a fair speed to start with, then more slowly. Twice he went to the nearer pianoforte and, without sitting down, played short passages. Halfway through a second study of the manuscript he spoke, in the voice that was as heavy as his tread.

  'How long was this in the writing, Anvil?'

  'In the writing down, master, no more than—'

  'My question was ill drawn. How long in the composing?'

  'It's hard for me to tell, master. Six minutes or seven.'

  'It'll be that long in the playing.'

  'Forgive me, master, of course it was much longer in the composing.'

  Morley stared past Hubert at one of the wall-paintings. 'Anvil,' he said at last: 'I know you meant six or seven minutes in the composing. What did you mean by composing?'

  'I... My mind was those minutes in going through it. Or...' Hubert hesitated, but the Prefect still stared. 'Or it was those minutes going through my mind.'

  'You tell me it came to you from somewhere else.' The voice was at its harshest now.

  'No—no, master, it was inside my mind already when I... looked.'

  'Very well. These F naturals here.' Morley pointed with a stubby finger. 'And again near the end.'

  'Oh yes.' Hubert sang a short phrase.

  'Why did you have your hands in front of you then?'

  'Did I so? I expect because it's the clarinet—I was...'

  'What clarinet, Anvil? This is a keyboard piece.'

  'Yes, master, but I heard that voice as a clarinet.'

  'And the other voices too, you heard them as flutes and violas and horns and so forth?'

  'No, sir. Two oboes, two clarinets and two bassoons.'

  'So this here is a keyboard transcription of a wind-sextet movement you haven't put on paper.'

  'Yes, master.'

  'Are all your keyboard pieces transcriptions of non-existent originals?'

  'Oh no, master: the theme and variations was for pianoforte.'

  'Indeed. Now at last to these F naturals. The key is G major, and elsewhere, here for example, we find the F sharp we expect. Well?'

  'They're different places, master.'

  'When I protest that the leading-note of G major is F sharp, what's your answer?'

  'That where I've written F natural nothing but F natural is possible.'

  Morley was silent for nearly a minute. Then he said, 'They let me know you go soon to be altered.'

  'Yes, master.'

  'I'm sorry to hear it. Oh, it means an eminent career for you and I wish you well. But it also means an end to your activities as composer.'

  'Surel
y not, sir.'

  'As surely as can be. Name me six pieces of any kind that a singer of the least eminence has written. You see? Consideration will show that a singer's life is too much lived with others, too remunerating in other ways than financial, simply too full to allow of composition. So I'm a little dismal, because you're by far the best pupil I've ever had. But in any case I must lose you soon as pupil: soon I'll be able to teach you nothing more.'

  'You are too gracious, master.'

  Again Morley stared at the painting. 'Why is it, Anvil, do you think, that St Cecilia is the patron saint of the blind as well as of music?'

  Anything Hubert might have had to say to this was never heard, because just then Lawrence came into the concert-chamber and up to the two on the platform.

  'Your indulgence, master,' he said, and then, 'Clerk Anvil, my lord Abbot wishes you to come to him at once.'

  'What have I done?' asked Hubert in fear, thinking of his encounter with Ned.

  'Nothing ill that I know of, clerk,' said the servant, smiling slightly. 'You're to go to Rome.'

  As the other two moved off, Morley sighed and nodded his head, his eyes shut.

  The Eternal City Rapid pulled out of Bayswater Station, its only stop between Coverley and Rome, at 6.25 a.m., and moved slowly, through networks of points and round tight bends, across London, across the river and into the north-west corner of the county of Kent, which was still virtually coextensive with the ancient kingdom. There the track straightened itself, changing direction only in the longest and shallowest of curves, its continuously-welded rails on their cushioned sleepers moving through natural obstacles, not round them: the work of the great Harrison. The half-mile-long train—three triplex tugs, 30 passenger baruches, 38 cargo vans—accelerated steadily, but it did not attain its top speed of 195 m.p.h. until the towers of Canterbury were to be seen out of the windows on the left side. Soon came the famous moment when it emerged from the Dover cliffs and entered on to the Channel Bridge, Sopwith's masterpiece, 23 miles 644 yards of road and railtrack carried between 169 piers. Little more than half an hour's travel on the French side took the Rapid as far as Clermont, the slipping-point for Paris where it freed itself of its rearmost quarter. As mid-morning approached, tunnels became longer and more frequent, but all were left behind in a matter of seconds except the 15-odd miles of the Bognanco itself. The track ran downhill through Milan, crossed the Po on stilts 200 feet high, climbed again into Parma and moved finally towards the coastal plain. The journey ended in the Stazione S. Pietro at 1.32-nearly a quarter of an hour late. It had all impressed Hubert enough to distract him from more than one troubling or puzzling question, of which not the least was the reason for his summons to Rome. The cabin his father had hired was like several parts of a beautiful house combined into one. After the luggage had been settled, the two of them moved to a kind of parlour by the window. Here there were leather chairs with gold-braided velvet cushions, tall potted plants, lithographs of views of Rome, a row of picture-books, a locker containing a chess-set and packs of playing-cards and much else; but Hubert attended only to things on the outside. As the train went faster, nearby objects like hedges or dwellings of the people became an indifferently-coloured lengthwise blur, but he very soon learned to overlook them in favour of more distant and important things: churches, great houses, busy streets and squares, and at different times no fewer than four aircraft, mighty envelopes of gas on the long run to Africa or the Antipodes.

  Breakfast was taken at a polished oval table on which the linen, china, silver and glass might have been made the previous day; the bread the Anvils ate with their hurtleberry conserve must have been baked that day, perhaps on the train itself: nothing seemed impossible. The meal was brought in (by two very polite attendants, one stern, the other timid) long after the train had reached its full speed, and Hubert noticed that, probably in consequence, the timid attendant had to take some special care when he poured the tea. The remnants being cleared away, something like a luxurious bedchamber offered itself in the form of couches shaded by silk screens, but Hubert stayed by the window to see what he had never seen before.

  The passage over the Alps was like flying in a dream: the always startling burst into bright sunshine, the huge steady leap between tiers of mountains and its abrupt cessation in the darkness of the next tunnel. When the streams and rivers began again, they had changed their colour from brown or grey to blue, green or turquoise. The countryside was the same as that in the background of some very old paintings Hubert remembered seeing on a visit to the Royal Gallery in Coverley: the sloping fields, the thin dark trees, even the small clouds on their own in the sky. Then, after slowing so gradually that the process could only be seen, not felt, the train came into Rome, where every building that was not a church looked like a palace, and stopped without the slightest jar.

  On the pavement beside the track, the Anvils were soon joined by one of the family servants carrying their slender overnight baggage; the man had of course travelled in the narrow cabin allotted his kind at the rear of the baruch. Hubert thought he had never seen so many folk at once: droves of pilgrims, clerics in ones and twos, officials with their staffs, men of affairs like his father, all making their way through crowds of vendors who pressed on them flowers, fruit, patties, flasks of wine, gewgaws, facsimiles of paintings and cheap-looking religious objects. After a short pause at the post of inspection, there was more of the same in the square outside, together with a great concourse of wheeled traffic; every vehicle seemed to make twice as much noise as its English counterpart, just as every Roman shouted instead of talking. The air was hot and damp. Hubert felt relieved when, after only a couple of minutes, a public was secured. Hunger, fatigue, confusion and anxiety weighed upon him. The first two yielded in due time to the excellent dinner provided by the Schola Saxonum, where rooms had been reserved for them, but in other respects he was still uncomfortable when, at ten minutes to four that afternoon, he and his father approached the Vatican Palace on the north side of St Peter's Square.

  Nine great windows, each with a decorated half-dome above it, dominated the facciata of the building, the one in the centre distinguished by a balcony and an abundance of high-relief sculpture; it must be from here that the Holy Father gave his addresses to the multitude. Below the windows ran a gallery, and below that, at ground level, an arcade, both of plain stone. The main gate, thirty feet high and flanked by massive granite pillars, was at the end nearer the basilica. Next to it was an incongruously modern and undignified structure, a sort of wooden hut with a flat roof. Here Anvil senior presented himself to a cheerful young monk, produced an identifying document and was evidently found to be expected. The monk nodded to the carmine-uniformed guard who, with shouldered fusil, stood directly at the gate, and the guard opened the wicket. Hubert was stepping over the sill when he noticed a third man who seemed to be stationed at the entrance with an eye to visitors; he was in plain clothes (dark-blue jacket and straw-coloured breeches), but he wore them as if they had been chosen for him.

  Inside, there was only one way to go: down the wide path that curved to and fro between masses of trees and shrubs growing so close together that, within a dozen paces, the palace itself could be seen only in stray glimpses and there was no sound except birdsong, some of it unfamiliar. The surface of the path consisted of flat-topped stones about the size of a crown piece, none regular in shape but each perfectly fitted with its neighbours, no two apparently alike in colour, any that the sun caught glinting as if wet. On either side, now and then overgrown in parts by stray foliage, and often a good deal weathered, there stood at five-yard intervals classical statues in marble or bronze, portrait busts on stone pedestals, sections of column with spiral bands of carving, fragments of colossi that included a huge sandalled foot irregularly shorn off above the ankle. Once, the path divided to accommodate an inactive fountain in a basin of some matt black substance; further on, it led straight through the considerable remains of what Hubert took t
o be a very ancient pagan temple, its walls, floor and low ceiling covered with designs he could not interpret. He scarcely heard his father's expressions of admiration or amazement, except to notice that they sounded genuine; he himself was more and more interested in reaching the end of their journey along the path, which oppressed him in some way.

  When at last they did, they had come in sight of a stone staircase at the end of another arcade and leading up to another gallery. From the foot of the staircase, a functionary with a curved sword and a splendid purple sash beckoned the new arrivals by holding out his hand and gently curling the fingers up in the palm. They followed him down the gallery past a series of shut doors, one of which, smaller than the others, had bars across it. Halfway along they turned off at a narrower staircase with a gilded ceiling and low-relief grottescos on the walls. On the second floor they went through a circular chamber in which everything from floor to ceiling seemed to Hubert, in the couple of seconds available to him, to be made of ivory, a square chamber in which everything likewise seemed to be covered with mosiac, and an L-shaped chamber full of more classical statuary, some of which he thought he recognised from books. Next was what must be an antechamber. The further door of this was flanked by another guard in carmine uniform and another man wearing plain clothes that seemed not to belong to him. The official with the sword opened this door, or rather half of it, spoke to someone on the far side, again made his courteous beckoning gesture to the Anvils, and withdrew, shutting the door after them.

  It was a lofty room with an immense window, no doubt one of the row to be seen from the square; through it, Hubert had a momentary sight of spires and roofs with statues on them, and, further off, domes and towers. Frescoes and oil paintings covered the walls. A line of padded benches in carved wood and gilt ran down the wall opposite the window; all were empty. So was the elevated golden throne at the far end. A figure robed in scarlet smiled and spoke, raising his voice as four o'clock sounded from innumerable bells.