Story, Volume II

by Dai Smith

  And it was true, a true effect. The strange words were startling. As even with English words, the more you looked at them, in the prolonged silence, and with nothing else to look at, the stranger, the more alien and disturbing, they became. This effect was held, and then, with a sharp change of mood, the dialogue resumed. Astrologers, Chaldeans and soothsayers were busily summoned and interrogated. The adapter showed through in a number of phrases suggesting, rather broadly, a translation class, with special play on the Biblical anomaly of upharsin and peres. This went on rather too long. Then the Queen came, and her recommendation of Daniel was a beautiful slow song: the first effect of the music that owed nothing to amplification. And Daniel, too, was magnificent – a tall figure accusing the King.

  Whom you will you kill

  Whom you fear you fetter

  But to the words, to the words. In another startling effect the words vanished. They were suddenly just not there; there was only Daniel’s relentless accusation. It was only at his climax that they appeared again, not now successively but in a single flare. Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.

  And then it was in effect an anticlimax as Daniel interpreted them, with full allegorical tendentiousness: the original now a mere trickle through the consequential homily on the inevitable turning of Fortune’s wheel and against the pride of worldly wealth and rule. The momentum was not regained until the new final scene, written for the music, in which among flashes in the darkness the court was scattered and the kingdom fell: a rush of disintegration, under the power of the organ finale, until only the words were still visible, in the now wholly dark chapel.

  The applause came well before the lights: an applause of relief, it seemed, before it was approbation. But it was long and obviously genuine. The performers appeared and acknowledged it. Luke Beit ducked rather than bowed and at once disappeared. The audience began to get up and to make its slow way out. Richards, standing with his wife and the Forresters, looked up at the muslin, above the chancel screen, to try to identify the technique of the effect of the words.

  ‘Oh blast,’ he heard Forrester say, and looked down to see the Head Porter, holding his top hat to make a way through the shuffling exit, bearing intently in the direction of the Senior Tutor.

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, sir.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We have some trouble, sir, on the west wall.’

  ‘What sort of trouble?’

  ‘Daubing, sir. The two who did it have been caught.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Richards said, as if at an intolerable joke.

  Forrester and the Head Porter looked at him curiously.

  ‘Do you know anything about this, Evan?’ Forrester asked.

  ‘No, nothing. I was only thinking of the outrageous coincidence. And of the way undergraduates have of making outrageous coincidences happen.’

  ‘What coincidence?’ Mrs Forrester asked, but her husband had taken charge. With the Head Porter clearing the way, they went quickly out to the court and round to the west chapel wall. There, under the light from the windows, a group of men were standing: two porters, the verger and two undergraduates. One of the porters had a torch and as he saw the others approaching he swung its beam to the wall. In large white painted letters, on the dark medieval stone, were three words: Free Nelson Mandela.

  ‘When was this done?’ Forrester asked.

  ‘About an hour ago, sir,’ said one of the porters. ‘I was on my rounds. I found these two gentlemen actually finishing it off.’

  ‘These two?’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Who are you? Come here.’

  The two undergraduates stepped forward.

  ‘Lewis.’

  ‘Aitken, sir.’

  Richards watched Aitken’s face. He knew him well as one of his own students: a normally quiet boy. He was pale and tense, but with an edge of defiance. Lewis, beside him, looked more openly angry.

  ‘You’re both responsible for this?’ Forrester asked.

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘Is it your idea of a joke?’

  ‘No sir, not a joke,’ Aitken replied carefully.

  ‘Putting Mandela in gaol is no kind of a joke,’ Lewis said, aggressively.

  ‘But you are not Mandela and this is not a gaol,’ Forrester said sharply. ‘This is a college chapel, which you have defaced like any hooligan.’

  ‘It’s a silicone paint, sir,’ the Head Porter put in.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You can’t get it off, sir. Not like whitewash you can’t. It dries hard to the stone soon after it comes from the can.’

  ‘The can?’

  ‘The aerosol, sir.’

  Forrester walked to the wall and tested the paint with his fingers. It had indeed dried hard. He looked at his unmarked finger. Then he turned to the Head Porter.

  ‘Mr Peters, call the police.’

  ‘Right, sir.’

  The porter was turning to go as Evan Richards protested.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, John, not the police. We can deal with this in the college.’

  ‘Why should we?’ Forrester asked. ‘If they were street hooligans would they get that privilege?’

  ‘We always have,’ Richards said, weakly.

  ‘We always have with practical jokes. But we’ve just been informed that this isn’t a joke.’

  ‘No, but think of the situation.’

  ‘What situation? The South African situation? This college is not responsible for the South African situation.’

  ‘It is in part,’ Aitken said. ‘It buys South African food. It invests in companies which exploit black workers. It’s at the end of the line which put Nelson Mandela in gaol.’

  ‘And for that tenuous connection you deface, perhaps permanently, a medieval wall.’

  ‘Walls are less important than people,’ Lewis said, hoarsely.

  ‘You have to do something,’ Aitken said, ‘to bring it home to people.’

  ‘Well you have,’ Forrester said, ‘brought it home. To yourselves. Go on, Mr Peters.’

  As the Head Porter went, Richards tried again.

  ‘I didn’t mean the South African situation,’ he said quietly to Forrester.

  ‘What situation then?’

  ‘Our own, don’t you see? The occasion they exploited. The coincidence they made happen.’

  ‘I don’t understand you.’

  ‘Well for God’s sake, they must have lifted the can as the words appeared in the chapel. The writing on the wall.’

  ‘Oh that,’ Forrester said.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Mrs Forrester said. ‘What has the play got to do with it?’

  ‘No but look,’ Richards said, remembering the intolerable explicitness of the medieval homily. ‘It was writing on the wall, an avenging hand in the name of a conquered people.’

  ‘The hand of God,’ Forrester said.

  ‘The play wasn’t about South Africa, Evan,’ Mrs Forrester said. ‘And when I think of all that wonderful music, people creating something beautiful, and then this, this destructive daub.’

  ‘At least Belshazzar was frightened,’ Mrs Richards said. ‘And wanted to know what it meant.’

  Forrester nodded.

  ‘I see your point, Evan. But it’s no good. You said an outrageous coincidence. I say simply an outrage. A cheap point scored and never mind the damage.’

  ‘I don’t think my own point is cheap,’ Richards said. ‘We are not Belshazzar and Daniel any more than we are Verwoerd and Mandela, but we are a comfortable society, we were a comfortable audience, and I think we do have to look at the writing on the wall.’

  ‘You approve, Evan, of what these young men have done?’ Mrs Forrester asked.

  ‘No. But I know why they did it. And I know we’ll look ridiculous if we prosecute the action we’ve just pretended to respond to, at a safely aesthetic distance.’

  ‘That’s just philistine, Evan.’

  ‘I don’t think so. But tell me one thing, Mark,’ he sa
id, turning to Aitken. ‘Did you mean to get caught? Or did you expect to get away with it?’

  ‘We wanted it in the open,’ Lewis said, defiantly.

  ‘No,’ Aitken said. ‘We hoped we wouldn’t be caught. We hoped the words would just have appeared, the unseen hand-writing.’

  ‘And why the silicone, which is bound to damage the wall?’

  ‘You’d have preferred whitewash,’ Lewis said sharply.

  The Head Porter came back.

  ‘They’re on their way, sir.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Peters. Take Aitken and Lewis to the lodge. I’ll see the police there.’

  Richards turned again to Forrester.

  ‘There are still these few minutes, John. Before the line is crossed.’

  ‘What line?’

  ‘A change in this place. A change in the mind of this place.’

  The Head Porter was looking at Forrester. Forrester nodded.

  ‘If you’ll come this way, gentlemen,’ Peter said to Aitken and Lewis. They went off, with the other porters behind them.

  ‘In the morning, Wilkes,’ Forrester said to the verger, ‘go to the Bursar’s office, get the agent to ring the paint manufacturers, ask for their advice on its removal.’

  ‘Sir.’

  Wilkes followed the others. The two Fellows and their wives were left on the damp grass by the chapel wall. As the lights in the chapel went out, the offending words – Free Nelson Mandela – were only barely distinguishable.

  ‘You’re right, Evan,’ Forrester said. ‘A line has been crossed, and that generation has crossed it. And none of them will know, for a long time, just what they’ve lost, what they think they’re free to reject.’

  ‘You’ll get the police to charge them?’

  ‘Yes, certainly. I’m going to hold back this barbarism as long as I can.’

  ‘Barbarism? For God’s sake. A political protest!’

  ‘A political protest by articulate young men who can think of nothing better than to deface walls.’

  ‘Perhaps we need a Daniel,’ Richards said, half laughing.

  ‘Are you casting yourself, Evan?’

  ‘An hour ago any of us might have. But we’ve gone beyond interpretation.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Mrs Forrester asked.

  ‘I’m not sure yet what it means. But, John if it goes to court I shall speak for them. I’ll give evidence of motive and evidence of character.’

  ‘And put yourself in their camp,’ Mrs Forrester said.

  ‘It’s been our habit to defend them.’

  ‘Well habits need changing,’ Mrs Forrester said. Forrester was looking unhappy.

  ‘You must do as you think right, Evan. But you’re profoundly wrong all the same.’

  ‘I watched the play,’ Richards said. ‘I think, don’t you, it will have a rather large audience.’

  ‘It certainly deserves to,’ Mrs Forrester said, with relieved enthusiasm.

  They walked away separating, over the damp grass.

  BOWELS JONES

  Alun Richards

  ‘Mr Bowcott Jones has the gripe,’ Fan Bowcott Jones said to the Portuguese guide who had inquired. ‘La grippe, n’est-ce pas?’

  ‘Sardines in charcoal?’ the guide said with a charming smile and a fey waggle of his braceleted wrist. He was young, dark, and beautiful, with neat hips swathed in scarlet flares like a girl’s. ‘Cook in charcoal, no? Just the peoples from the hotel?’

  ‘No, he’s not feeling well. L’estomac!’

  The guide persisted in not understanding.

  ‘In a boat with fisherman’s, Portuguese style?’

  ‘I shall come.’

  ‘But of course…’

  ‘But Mr Bowcott Jones is inconvenienced.’

  ‘Vour parlez français très bien,’ the guide said, and took out a handsome red purse. ‘I shall require two hundred escudos for the two.’

  They stood outside the bedroom door on the fourth floor of the Hotel Lagos in the Algarve. The guide had come all the way up the stairs since the lift was out of order, but Mrs Bowcott Jones could not make herself understood. The Portuguese were simple and charming, but the confidence with which they assumed they understood everything was profoundly irritating. They were grave and serious, more attentive than the Spanish, and the food, if you ate it in reasonable quantities, was infinitely more value for money. But this year, like the last, Bowcott had found a pub where they gave the impression of listening to him, and once again, it had led to excess.

  Mrs Bowcott Jones sighed, searched her vocabulary, and finally said in a mixture of Spanish, French and Portuguese, overlaid with a sympathetic Welsh valley accent: ‘Solamente uno!’ She held up one finger. ‘Señor Jones – non! Pash favor, uno?’

  ‘Ah, jest one?’ said the guide, flashing his teeth.

  ‘Pash favor,’ Mrs Bowcott Jones said again, returning his smile. They were extraordinarily sexy, these nut-brown boys. If you gave your mind to that sort of thing.

  ‘One hun’red escudos for je..st the one?’

  ‘Momento,’ Mrs Bowcott Jones went into the room and closed the door firmly behind her. Now her expression changed and her voice became harder as she looked down at the gross, fleshy bulk of her husband who lay motionless in bed, his chin bowed and thick knees doubled up over his comfortable belly in the attitude of an elephantine embryo. Bowcott was bilious again.

  ‘No good asking me for sympathy. You’re fifty-six years of age, very likely Chairman of the bench next year, but the moment you’re abroad, you’re like a sailor off a tanker or something,’ his wife said sharply. The neat figure of the waiting guide had irritated her, and now the lump of Bowcott’s heavy form reminded her of the white rhino in Bristol Zoo, the highlight of school trips when she was a child, and later a primary-school teacher.

  Bowcott attempted to speak, failed, and said nothing. Years ago, he had thought his wife a little common, but it had the effect of increasing his self-importance. He could condescend from time to time. But now he could just moan and was in danger of being sick.

  ‘Oh, Fan… Oh, Duw…’

  ‘Whatever you think you’re doing, I’m going on the sardine trip.’

  He opened his mouth once more but realised that his lips were partially stuck together, and gave himself an intelligence report. Booze and fags, he thought. He’d meant to stick to cigars.

  ‘Just the people from the hotel. It’s a deserted beach,’ his wife said with some emphasis. ‘And there’s no need to make a face like that. The people on the tour are very nice people. English, of course, but they all asked after you at breakfast.’

  Bowcott gave a little belch. He was getting old. One night on the tiles meant that there were days that got lost, slipped past the memory, notching themselves on to his stomach, however, like knife slashes on a branch.

  ‘Where’s your wallet? The guide is waiting.’

  That was another thing. He couldn’t remember where he’d put his wallet. He rolled over in a pool of sweat and felt under the pillow, but it wasn’t there. He could not remember what he’d done with his shirt and shorts for that matter. Avoiding his wife’s eye, he slid a glance in the direction of a nearby chair. But his shorts and shirt were missing too.

  ‘I washed them,’ Fan said darkly. ‘Well, I couldn’t send them to the laundry. I daren’t. And your wallet wasn’t in them. Oh, for goodness’ sake, what have you done with it?’

  She had been asleep when he had eventually got home in the early hours of the morning. He had been in the English Tavern in the village, a place he privately referred to as a hot spot, but things had got a little too hot, and now an extraordinary phrase kept repeating itself in his mind.

  ‘For Chrissakes, the bogey’s got his shooter out!’

  It was such an alarming phrase for a man like him to have heard at all. There was a note of hysteria in it, but as he tried to fit it into place, he recalled incidents from the previous night, images floating into consciousness like the inte
rrupted trailer of some incredibly seedy film. What had happened this time?

  His wife turned impatiently to the dressing table drawer where they kept the passports. The wallet was not there either, but his passport was. Hidden between the folded pages, there were a number of high denomination notes which she knew he kept there for emergencies. They had always smuggled a little currency out of the UK. You never knew when it would be needed with Bowcott. She took two five-hundred escudo notes and snapped them in his face.

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if I didn’t really spend today. Some of that ornamental silver is expensive enough,’ she said punishingly. She folded the money into her purse, put on the pink straw hat which she’d bought for the occasion in San Antonio, picked up her Moroccan handbag, and finally the Spanish stole from the package holiday four years ago, and then marched to the door,

  ‘The mixture is beside your bed,’ she said at the door.

  ‘Mixture?’ he said hoarsely. He sounded like the victim of a pit disaster.

  ‘The kaolin compound you had from Lucas Thomas the Chemist. Four spoonfuls a day,’ she said getting it wrong. Two spoonfuls four times a day, the instructions read, carefully written in Lucas Thomas’ feminine handwriting. ‘Although what Lucas Thomas knows about conditions here, I can’t imagine. Portugal is not Dan y Graig.’

  Her last words. She slammed the door which did not close and he heard her brave Spanish once more.

  ‘Vamos a ir. A los sardinhos,’ she said to the guide who had remained.

  ‘Senhora is multi-speaking?’ the guide said politely. ‘In your absence, the lift is working.’

  ‘Obrigard,’ she pronounced carefully. She went to the first three lessons of the language classes in the Women’s Institute every year. It gave her enough to be going on with, apart from prices which she insisted on having written down.

  Still immobile, Bowcott heard the lift descend, feeling like an overworked seismograph. His stomach was so distended that each part of his anatomy seemed now to distinguish sounds, as well as record its own special suffering. Although by now the Bowcott Joneses were veterans of the short quick trips all along the Costas, he always forgot himself sooner or later. If it wasn’t the sun, it was the food or the wine, and although he usually reserved the big bust-up for the end of the stay when he could at least be in flying distance of Lucas Thomas’ healing potions, this year he had gone over the top on the second night.