The Sinful Stones (10 page)

Um, thought Pibble, ingenious, given their premises. Could they really think he believed it? This bullying intelligence on the stairs below him couldn't be that naïve—or did he have pockets of naïvety, geodes in the flinty mind? No, more likely they'd think he thought they thought he believed them—but that meant they didn't mind his knowing they knew he knew about the microphone. Dizzy with this double helix of deception and the single helix of the stairs he padded out into the cloisters. They were trying to kill the old man—hold fast to that.

The rest of the tour was boring. The buildings held nothing but a succession of small rooms, meanly proportioned. The Refectory, which occupied almost the whole length of the cloisters on the side to the left of the tower, was more nobly conceived but had come out not a whit less ugly. The Virtues slept in cells which guarded the harsh dormitories of the green-robed initiates. Presumably Rita had slipped past her warders when they too were worn down with the long abrasions of the day and deep in the ozonised sleep of the sea-wind.

The day was certainly hard. Pibble was shown a patch to the east of the buildings where stunted broccoli leaned from the wind like thorn trees on the Downs; beyond, a scum of green on the sour earth showed where the spring oats were coming up; beyond that a gang of the brethren were subduing a new stretch of soil. But most of the inmates were involved in the ceaseless expansion of the buildings themselves, digging the foundations for a second square of cloisters, or adding a storey to one side of the existing ones. They climbed a warped ladder to see how this was done.

The process was curious, and in its way ingenious. The Refectory was two storeys high already, but beyond it three sets of vaulted ground-floor cells ran westwards—first the set with the doctor's room at the end, then the puzzling line of windowless cells, and finally the guest cells. The storey over the first vault was now almost finished and was being roofed with the rafters and slates from the second vault, whose long hummock of rough grey stone now lay exposed and ready for its own second storey, which in turn would be topped off with the roof from the guest-cells. It was a kind of masonic leap-frog.

Brother Providence pointed and explained. The gangs of initiates hauled, heaved and cemented, silent except for the rapid patter of prayer whenever any large stone had to be cajoled into place. St Bruno had vanished, and another man was doing his job. The gulls creaked, the wind hissed, the far foam snored, and the easy voice beside Pibble spoke of discipline. No, they did not labour at the stones all day; after dinner they resorted to more spiritual disciplines, most of the brethren learning the art of meditation in the Refectory, unless called out to join special groups for exercises of the soul under the guidance of one Virtue. Those in particular need, such as poor Rita, received individual help in the difficult disciplines of world-renunciation—Providence himself was called to give that help, while Brother Hope was specially adept in the management of small groups. In the winter, of course, when the days were so short in these latitudes, all worked on the stones while it was light and did their spiritual exercises in the dark. The dark, indeed, could be a great help to certain stubborn souls; if only it were possible to still all the fallen senses at once, then the path of renunciation would be markedly smoother. No, Brother Simplicity no longer joined them in these disciplines, and neither did Sister Dorothy. They had never been sealed, but when Simplicity had made his final throw and gone to the ultimate squares, no doubt Sister Dorothy would join them with a whole heart.

“She'll be a tough nut,” said Pibble, unthinkingly.

Brother Providence appeared not to notice this hint that the methods of the Community were no more than routine will-breaking, such as innumerable faiths have seen, feeding innumerable inquisitions, filling innumerable prisons. The thought of prisons chimed with a gang of initiates trooping back from some task of stone-displacement in shuffling silence at a pace he had seen before, the dreary step of convicts to and from the exercise yard or their day's work. Remembering Providence's mysterious challenge he scanned the group for familiar faces; one woke a faint echo. There ought, by rights, to be a third-rate lock-picker somewhere about—perhaps the very man who'd recognised Pibble. St Bruno would have made more mess of the lock than that faint curl of swarf—where was St Bruno? And another thing, what had brought the several ex-cons whom the monk had spoken of to this unlikely preventive detention?

He was aware of a sharpness, a pay-attention-boy note, in Brother Providence's last remark. (Got it! The man had been a schoolmaster!)

“I'm sorry,” he said. “There's so much to take in at one go—the mind becomes numbed.”

“Ah.”

The big head nodded understandingly. If you took St Bruno, or Rita, as your yardstick numb minds were the Community's stock-in-trade.

“Did you ask me something?” said Pibble.

“No matter, my dear fellow. It must seem a contrast to the routine of your normal life. I too have known routines.”

The problem of the trout which wishes to retain the angler's interest is to nose at the fly without disdain.

“Yes,” said Pibble, “it's a contrast all right. I don't know quite what to make of it yet. It certainly has its … um …”

“Attraction? Yes, even a child can be attracted by the shape and colour of the board. There is hope, and more than hope, for all these”—he nodded towards a trudging gang—“because they have with our help become as little children.”

“I know you'll think it's none of my business,” said Pibble, “but I'm worried about Sister Rita. I'd have thought a psychiatrist—”

“You are talking the language of Babylon,” said the monk sharply. “There is a Babylon of the mind as well as of the body. In the Babylon of the body sister Rita was a harlot, though she came from quite a good family—distant connections of the Howards, to use the language of Babylon for a moment. She was at a dozen schools, then ran away with a group of popular musicians who introduced her to drugs before deserting her. She was found by Servitude supporting herself in Paddington under the guise of Senorita Rita, Spanish Exercises. The drugs, of course, are responsible for her mental state. Drugs. Matter which enslaves mind. The epitome of Babylon. I have been in touch with her family, and they are relieved to know that she is in our care. Our discipline is certainly hard for such a creature, deliberately hard, but we make sure that it is not hard beyond her endurance. And what we give her is not the palliatives of your Babylonish psychiatrists. They, even when successful in their own terms, merely make a soul content with whatever happens to be its state in the mess of fallen matter. We cure.”

“How did Brother Servitude come across her?”

“We are not as enclosed a Community as you may think, Superintendent. For instance, under the laws of Babylon we are a charity, and this demands negotiations with the tax people and other authorities. I myself have been to London twice this winter. Servitude goes more often. The Eternal City will need a great army of masons, and their recruitment is Servitude's particular care. He has always been a seeker, sifting the faiths of Babylon until the Lord guided him to the true one, and he has many acquaintances among the priests of those faiths. I think someone in the Salvation Army introduced him to Rita.”

Yes, Servitude, the garrulous gunner, was a lost-ten-tribesman, if ever. Useful to know that Providence had been in London, though the theft of the manuscript would have to wait. Pibble had deliberately asked no more about it than was plausible, and was already regretting having put his guide's back up by trying to do his duty by Rita. She would have to wait too. Time to shift the talk to a less touchy area.

“You draw your members from a fascinatingly wide range,” he said. “I was wondering about your pilot's past history.”

But the monk reacted as though Pibble had once more stepped on to ground where trespassers are shown coldly out by a gamekeeper with a gun under his arm.

“I suppose there's no harm your knowing,” he said after a pause. “Tolerance was a garage hand who had the misfortune to win a talent contest on television and decided to try his luck as a professional performer; but, as I have told you, luck is an illusion—he was willed towards the stage and then spared the hideous tortures of fame, and so willed for a while into ill company, and all for the single purpose of Brother Servitude finding him and bringing him to work for the City. Now I believe I have shown you all there is to see, though only a crumb of all there is to know. What would you prefer to do next?”

Pibble looked at his watch. Just after eleven.

“I think Sir Francis should be ready to see me quite soon,” he said. “Are you sure it's all right for me to stay for another day or two? If …”

“As a matter of fact it would suit us much better if you stayed. Tolerance has some mechanical work to do to both
Truth
and the helicopter, and if he stays at the harbour he can keep watch on Rita while she re-cuts her die. If he flies you back, we shall have to spare another Virtue from the afternoon's exercises.”

“Doesn't she do them?”

“No. The full Refectory confuses her mind, filling it with imaginings of the courts of the Kings of Babylon. She is one who must be guided alone.”

“Oh,” said Pibble. “Shall I come and see you when I've finished with Sir Francis?”

“Please do. Come to my office. If we were back in Babylon I should have been able to offer you Madeira before luncheon.”

“I'm grateful enough anyway. This has been a most thought-provoking experience.”

“I hope so,” said Brother Providence casually, and strode off along the cloisters.

Pibble walked more slowly the other way. Madeira before luncheon. Distant
connections
of the Howards. A very posh brand of schoolmaster indeed, Brother Providence must have been. Unnerving—both in the elemental power of personality which he seemed able to call out at will, in the way that a snake-charmer conjures the cold beast out of a basket; and also in the deliberate, unsweating, willed social expertise, which all the world's Pibbles long for, are ashamed of their longing, and know they will never achieve. And then this terrifying faith, with its garnishing of biblical cress—and the man believed in it, and believed that he was doing his victims
good
. Awful, hideous—or was Pibble's revulsion and distrust a legacy from Mr Toger? His own faith was a disorderly drawerful of doubts, but at least it included a doubt of his own motives. Was it possible that the emotional stimulus of meeting Sir Francis at last, and summoning Father out of limbo, had also summoned other wraiths, a dismal chorus of Mother's dour friends? Could he have been hating and distrusting the Community for revenge—stale, mean revenge?

Come, Pibble, there was the microphone. But that could be explained. There were the fake pills, and perhaps they could too. A doctor must be entitled to administer placebos, though the book said. . .There was the picked lock. And Sir Francis, known traitor, might have done that in the course of some unfathomable deception. There was Rita, whose family approved of her presence here. Yes, she was morally inescapable, but not evidence.

Hope was at his niche, not meditating but leaning casually against the wall, arms folded and legs crossed, watching the bustle of work as an office messenger watches the cranes on a building site. This time the flex snaked upwards, an eerie echo of the cold beast out of the basket. Pibble shivered, nodded, and climbed the stairs.

Sister Dorothy was also leaning against a wall in an attitude which showed she couldn't have stood without its help. She prodded an envelope towards Pibble as he came up.

“Prov says to give him this,” she said in a thick whisper. “Don't want the old sod to see me. Christ, I feel bloody queer.”

“Why don't you sit down for a bit?” said Pibble.

He had to catch her as she slumped on to the top step. She groaned and hid her face in her hands. Pibble eased her against the wall again and went into the room.

Sir Francis was sitting in his chair, but not as before. Now he looked truly old. The shoulders were stooped, the eyes lacked their fire. But the voice didn't.

“You're two minutes late, you damned idiot. My time's precious. Yours isn't.”

As he spoke he pointed over Pibble's shoulder towards the vault.

“I'm terribly sorry,” said Pibble and wheeled round.

There hung the microphone, ten feet from the floor, plain to see once you'd looked for it but unreachable except with a ladder. Its flex left through a small hole in the vault, made by bashing out a fillet of stone. A few chips of rubble still lay on the carpet.

“That's what your damned fool of a father was always saying,” said Sir Francis, pushing a small pad of paper at Pibble.

“I've remembered quite a bit more about him,” said Pibble as he took it. The writing seemed as firm as ever—or was there a flicker in the spiky loops? It said “My pill was different this morning. Wrong texture. Get me out or get a proper doctor here. Use your authority. Twelve hours …” Presumably the rest of the message had been interrupted by Pibble's arrival. He fished in the pouch of his habit for his handkerchief, unknotted it and let the white tablets fall into his palm. He handed them to the old man.

“Clever of you,” snarled Sir Francis. “Damned unmemorable fellow if ever I met one.”

He took the tablets, tried one on his tongue, nodded, picked up a glass of water from the table by his chair and washed it down. The other he slipped into the back of his fob watch.

“The trouble is,” said Pibble, “that all the things I remember are little unconnected bits, the way a child does remember things. Perhaps if you were to tell me your end, then I'd be able to piece together a more coherent pattern for you.”