The Sinful Stones (4 page)

Father, told these motives, would have bent his index finger back, paled, made a false start, and then shown small Jamie in quiet phrases too clear for any misunderstanding that he was lying to himself, cheating himself. “Get the half-crown accent!” the coalmen had jeered when Father went up the street to tell them that they were giving the Miss Bartons short measure, but small Jamie, even now, had no such counter-attack.

So he should make a report. It should cover both the manuscript and the Community effect on Sister Rita and other fragile minds.

A single midnight meeting with one near-senile elder, and another with a crazed teenager? Some report! Oh yes, and the microphone.

Pibble stared at the harbour and found that he could follow the quay out to the blind light-tower at its end. Craning round he saw that the sky above the cliffs was paler, and the stars diminished. Could it be dawn already? The hound sighed as he rose, but did not follow him up the cliff path into the wind's inimical caress. So at least it would be tolerably honest to rootle around for a day or two more; and he'd need an excuse for staying, which Sir Francis would have to supply by pretending to wish to know more about the Pibbles for his book; and that would mean several more interviews in which the talk would run, inevitably, on Father.

It wasn't dawn, it was moonrise. Hard to connect this indifferent crescent with the dreamy, rust-tinged round that shines on Lovers' Lanes. It was well up in a big patch of clear sky, just to the left of the buildings; so silhouetted the central tower looked crookeder than ever. Even this theatrical light, enhancing the gaunt outline while concealing the muddle and mess of the lower buildings, could not lend the structure a momentary dignity. It was certainly big—a gruesome amount of human effort had gone into building it—and would be vast when it was finished, if ever. Pibble had a momentary vision of the entire island covered with this quasi-Gothic fungus. But its confused proportions disguised its size. It reminded him in some ways of those strange, isolated sheds which Air Force engineers improvise on the perimeter of airfields, in the nastiest available brick, with the ungainliest conceivable outlines, on the most conspicuous skyline, and then top off with a rust-dribbling water-tank.

But now it meant sleep and warmth, if there was warmth anywhere in the world. Pibble tramped gingerly towards it. Either he was becoming cannier at walking without shoes or his feet had lost all feeling.

2

Y
ou can see him now,” said the voice again. “You'll get the itch if you sleep in that bloody thing.”

Pibble knew that he hadn't slept, but how had he been so anxiously fishing for a sunken boat in Mount Pond on the Common, a grown man wearing a sailor suit which he mustn't get muddy? He opened his eyes.

There was no lantern this time. Drab daylight and icy air came through the glassless window.

“Don't wait for me,” he said. “I know my way.”

“You excited him,” said Sister Dorothy, bitterly.

“He excited himself, I'm afraid,” said Pibble. “Has he ever talked to you about his dispute with my father?”

“He doesn't talk to me now, about that or anything else. Try Brother Servitude.”

No time for shirt and trousers, but glorious socks, at least. Civilised shoes. Ouch! His left big toe was too swollen with last night's bruising to conform to the once familiar leather; and the outer edge of his right foot was very tender too. Socks alone, then? No. If he stole about like the rest of the Community there was an extra chance that they would forget to be on their guard, those who knew anything. Perhaps he ought to ask for a green habit, or a brown one—nobody else seemed to sport this staring orange. His skin was tingling strangely on his fore-arm, and he snatched back the sleeve to peer at a patch where the coarse cloth had printed its graph-paper squares on his sleeping flesh. Panicky with the dread of nameless blains and flakings, blotches and pustules, he started to wriggle out of the habit. And a finely inconspicuous figure he'd be, creeping about Clumsey Island in blue pin-stripes on bare and bleeding feet. He wriggled back.

She was waiting for him after all.

“Don't let on that I told you,” she said, “but you've got to remember he's not just old. He's ill.” Her voice was not quite as bleak as hitherto, but tinged with a faint echo of that cooing note which had come last night through the soaked microphone.

“He's a long way from medical attention, isn't he?” said Pibble.

“Brother Patience was a doctor,” she said. “He gives him his drugs.”

“What's he on?”

“Cortisone.”

“Is that what makes him so …”

“Hairy?”

“No. I meant …”

“Bloody-minded?”

“I wouldn't …”

“He's always been like that, ever since I've known him, an utter bastard. Long before we came to this bloody place.”

“Why did you come?”

“He gave all his radio patents away to the Foundation, and we were broke. He used to come sailing up here, and I … Sh!”

She slipped him a not-in-front-of-the-servants glance as they came round the last corner. Brother Hope was still in his niche, apparently full fathom five in trance; not one puckering of gooseflesh showed on the smooth pink steppes of skin; apart from his shepherding of Rita he probably hadn't shifted all night from his original pose. He did not speak or stir as they passed. Pibble peeled off up the stairs, and Dorothy strode on without a word.

His nose told him before his eyes, but he was coughing in the reeking smoke of Sir Francis's room (sharp wood, rank rubber) before he could stop. A small gout of adrenalin gingered his middle-aged muscles up to the rescue of the doddering genius, supposing Pibble could find him in the murk.

“That you, Pibble?” cried the creaking voice from the far corner. “Log fell out of my damned fire. Pick it up like a good fellow.”

“Are you all right?” called Pibble.

“Course I am, you damned fool. Get rid of that log. I'm in me bedroom.”

Pibble stepped back to the landing, took a deep breath and blundered across the room by memory. He could barely see the log, even when he was close to. It had fallen in the most peculiar fashion, neatly against the side of the fender; luckily the rug had been shifted since his last visit, so that wasn't burnt, nor the stone below—only the thin trail of flex which ran under the fender at that point and accounted for the burning-rubber smell. Pibble lifted the log with tongs and shoved it into the still cheery fire; then, weeping and blind, he plunged for the bedroom door. Who would have thought that one little log had so much smoke in it?”

Sir Francis, lagged with blankets, was crouched on the edge of the bed looking as out-of-context as a condor in a zoo. But the pop eyes were bright.

“Wire burnt through, hey?” he whispered.

“I couldn't see for smoke,” said Pibble, “but I wouldn't have thought so. Only the insulation.”

“Damned rum thing, knowledge,” said Sir Francis. “Here I am, full to the cruppers with knowledge—know more than anyone else in the world, I shouldn't be surprised. Ought to be able to dream up a hundred and one easy ways of putting a mike out of action, accidental on purpose, hey? Only thought of one, and damned inconvenient and damned fishy too.”

“Couldn't you simply send for someone and tell him to take it away?”

“Things a'n't like that, not like that at all. Leave the door open?”

“Yes, the smoke should clear pretty soon.”

“Find the beggar who's been cribbing my papers, hey?”

“Not yet,” said Pibble. “I can't go around asking questions in the middle of the night.”

“But that's what the damned police always do,” objected Sir Francis. “Hoist you out of bed in the middle of the night, throw a blanket over your head and take you off to clink for questioning. Why can't you?”

“I haven't the authority.”

“Yes, you have—you've got mine.”

“I assure you, Sir Francis, I wouldn't be likely to get anywhere if I woke up Father Bountiful …”

“Couldn't do that—the damned incontinent maniac's nuzzling a half-caste actress half way up Everest. Rum end for the Hackenstadt meat millions, hey? Who's on the other end of the microphone?”

“Brother Hope.”

“Arrested him, then? He must be in it?”

“Probably, but not certainly. For instance, he knew I was a policeman and may simply have wished to know what I was up to, perhaps even to protect you.”

“Tchah!”

“If you want him arrested, I shall have to question him directly, then fly back to the mainland, make a report, persuade my superiors that the case is fit for investigation, clear our responsibility with the local police, and come back with a full-dress team with warrants signed by the local magistrates—and, I imagine, seeing it's you, about three hundred journalists.”

“Can't have that, you buffoon.”

“In that case I shall have to try and find out what's happened on my own, in an unofficial fashion. It's going to be difficult enough by daylight, without breaking into people's sleep.”

“Damned bore, sleep. I haven't slept for twenty-seven years, not counting anaesthetics.”

“I'm between jobs at the Yard, and I've got three days leave due to me. I could stay that long. The best cover would be to pretend that your relationship with my father and the episode at the Cavendish were more important for your memoirs than you, presumably, think they are.”

“Want to worm out all about your dad, hey?” said Sir Francis sharply.

“Certainly I'd like to know anything there is to know.”

“Vindicate him after all these years, o' course?”

“No.”

“I wouldn't waste a penny stamp to vindicate my father.”

“I'm afraid I don't know much about him,” confessed Pibble.

“No more do I. Boots is most of what I remember, stinking or rank black mud. He kept otter-hounds, went broke to feed 'em, had to take me away from Eton. Smashed up his son's education for a lot of damned smelly dogs.”

“That sounds an interesting chapter.”

“Not that sort of book,” said Sir Francis. “Not about nobodies. My old man was a quintessential nobody—small country squire, kept otter-hounds, wife died in child-bed, only son too brainy to talk to, went broke, shot himself in a Vichy
pension
. Very low square, as my friends in the brown gowns would say.”

“How much are you part of the Community, Sir Francis? You don't wear the regulation dress, I see.”

“Tried it for a bit, got the itch, put myself back into gentleman's kit pretty damned quick.”

“But you subscribe to some of their doctrines?”

“Nothing to do with you, you damned peeler. But I'll tell you it's symbiosis, because you won't know what that means. Damned smoke gone, hey?”

Pibble rose and peered. The brisk wind had come bustling in through the open door and brushed the murk up the chimney. A faint tang of bonfires still hung among the bookshelves.

“It's quite clear,” he said over his shoulder, “but I'm afraid I left the door open and it's pretty chilly.”

“Well, shut the door and poke the fire,” creaked the voice from the bedroom—a little louder, perhaps, than it need have spoken. Pibble obeyed, then carefully placed the poker across the bared inches of microphone wire and trod on it to make sure of a good contact. Sir Francis came in, hobbling under his blankets, peered at the poker, grunted and sat down in his chair.

“Silly thing to say, that,” he grumbled. “Willoughby Pibble's son is certain to know what symbiosis means.”

“I think most people would,” said Pibble. “There's a lot of popular science about it these days.”

“Ought to be a law against it.”

“I take it that the Community has the kudos of having an immensely distinguished man among them, and you have some compensating advantage.”

“Great self-educators, these Pibbles.”

“But I'd have thought their actual creed was a little, um …”

“Your dad wouldn't have liked to hear his precious boy sneering at someone else's beliefs. Very steady chapel-goer, Pibble was. Very pi. Wouldn't even go down to the lab on Sundays to pump up my vacuums over the week-end—I had to do it.
Me
!”

“But he was an atheist,” said Pibble. “Of course he had a very bad war and perhaps that …”

There was a brusque knock at the door, and Sister Dorothy stalked in carrying a large black enamel tray.

“I've brought two breakfasts,” she said with a sharp smile, “so you didn't have to interrupt your chatter. Mrs Macdonald has smoked some more kippers.”

The smile stayed on her face, tense and secretive, as she set the tray on a small gate-legged table, slammed cutlery and crockery into position and slapped out, sniffing.

Pibble was unfamiliar with kippers. Poor as they had been between the rare patches of comfort, his mother would never have allowed such symbols of a working-class diet into the house. And now Mary, though she was sometimes tempted by the eulogies of a colour-supplement chef out slumming, never bought the fish because it was “tiresome”. He started to detach the backbone.

“No, no!” yapped Sir Francis from the other side of the table. “Let me do it for you, you damned idiot! Slide your plate across.”

Pibble did so. The great scientist flipped the fish over, skimmed the skin off with three quick movements, then rapidly and gently teased the flesh away from the underlying bones.

“Sure sign of a nincompoop,” he said, “trying to eat a kipper that way up. Only met six people in me whole who life knew the right way—all the rest of 'em nincompoops.”

“I'd never tried before.”

“Poor man's food, hey?” snapped Sir Francis. “You don't know what poverty means. You'd eat anything then, and damn your pride. Do the other one yourself, or mine will be cold.”

Pibble ate the smoky, tender, juicy flesh and studied the knack as Sir Francis did the same trick with his own fish.

“They're very good,” he said.

“Damned well ought to be. Caught in this sea and smoked on this island.”

“By the Community?”

“Course not, you fool. By the Macdonalds. Our lads wouldn't catch anything but dogfish, or if they did they'd cure 'em wrong, keep 'em wrong and cook 'em wrong.”

“I thought you had to smoke kippers with oak chippings.”

“Damned snobbery. Isn't a tree on the island. Our brown brethren fly in a few logs to coddle my old bones, but all the other fires are peat. Can't you taste it?”

The old man made a pyramid of the de-boned fish on his plate, reached for the salt-cellar and poured until the pyramid was as white as the Cuillins. Then he picked up a white pill from the tray, put it on his tongue, frowned, and washed it down with tea.

“Damned waste of good food,” he said sourly as he began to demolish and eat his snow scene. Suddenly, for the first time in forty years, Pibble remembered the lodger who had come to stay with the Barton sisters, to the thrilled scandal of the street, though they were well past fifty—a tall lethargic man with a strangely darkened skin, who used to fall asleep sometimes in the middle of conversations. He'd done just that trick, piling already salty food with mountains more salt, then eating the mess without relish. Four months he'd stayed, a mooching centre of melancholy, before he was taken off to hospital. He'd been a gentleman, the Bartons had explained, but there was something wrong with his glands. The word “Atticus” dodged into Pibble's consciousness, probably by word-association with attic salt.

“Rum thing,” said Sir Francis as he finished gobbling. “Your dad would have swooned with joy at the idea of breakfasting with me, and now you sit there as suspicious as a peasant at a law-case.”

“Was he any good at his job?” asked Pibble.

“It's a contract,” said the old man after a pause. “It's a bore, but it's a contract. You find out who's been cribbing my papers, and in return I'll tell you every damned thing I can remember about your miserable father. Though I've a good mind to report you to your superiors, blackmailing me this way.”

“It's up to you,” said Pibble. “If you want me to do the job on my own I must have an excuse for staying here. Even then I can't guarantee results. It would be much quicker and more efficient to go through the regular channels, bring in detectives with an official status, who could ask straightforward questions, take finger­prints and so on.”