Sandel Read online

  Sandel

  is the story of two young lovers whose passion for one another is exclusive, lyrical, tender and subject to the tensions that any intense romantic relationship is liable to.

  'A remarkable novel . . . a controlled and beautifully written love story, at once passionate and pure'

  NEW STATESMAN

  'Angus Stewart has tackled the complexities of adolescent homosexual love with remarkable understanding and control . . . the writing is always intelligent, its sensual quality surprisingly beautiful'

  THE TIMES

  U.K. 40p AUSTRALIA & NEWZEALAND $1.25

  S1NGAPORE $4.00 CANADA $1.25 SOUTH AFRICA 95c

  'Mr. Stewart has really succeeded with this young character, and in depicting a love which truly exists and is not despicable' Sunday Telegraph

  'Coolly witty' Sunday Times

  'Bizarre, accomplished' Time s Literary Supplement

  'The whole thing adds up to a remarkably good first novel' The Observer

  Also by Angus Stewart in Panther books

  Snow In Harvest

  Copyright (c) Angus Stewart 1968

  Book One

  Chapter 1

  The satchel gave him a bias. That was the word. His father's bowls had them. It meant a weight on one side. When the bus dropped him, and he started up the long drive to their house, he ended in the bushes on the right. Then he had to put the satchel on the other shoulder, and after a bit he was in the bushes on the left. Sometimes he didn't get that far. Today he would have hit the lodge if he hadn't changed shoulders quickly. Now he was in the laurel bush. Gregory was there, playing with sticks and the ambulance.

  'I've got a good swop,' David said.

  Gregory stopped pushing the sticks in through the window of the ambulance, and held it tightly. None of the paint was chipped. It had a red truss and a silver bumper-bar. Gregory gave him the broken tip-up. David pushed it away.

  'What you got, then?' Gregory asked.

  David took out his jeep. He still looked at the ambulance. Gregory wrinkled his nose, and pushed the ambulance round behind his back. 'Your Mum went in one, didn't she?' he said.

  David didn't say anything. He couldn't remember.

  'Well, she did, my mum says. It was just after you was born.'

  'You ought to swop,' David said, 'because it's my birthday tomorrow. I'm eight and I'm having eight candles'

  'Can I come to the party?'

  'You're not allowed.' said David. 'You only live in our lodge and you're too young.' Gregory had a flap instead of proper fly-buttons.

  'Can I come next time, then?'

  David squatted down so he could see the ambulance better;

  'I'm not having any more birthdays. I'm going to boarding school in the south.' He wasn't sure what the south was.

  Gregory put the ambulance up his jumper. David held up the jeep in front of his nose so that it was driving straight into his eyes. He closed one of them.

  'Will you swop just those white tyres for the black ones off this jeep,' David changed eyes and tried to reach the front wheels with his tongue. It wouldn't stretch. He wondered if his mouth was big enough to make a garage for the jeep. But he only drove it up to his lips.

  Gregory hugged the ambulance against his tummy. David knew they were too near the lodge for him to grab it. Anyway, when Gregory howled he felt frightened. He shoved him with his knee, so that he rolled on his side in a ball still hugging the ambulance.

  'Your mother spanks you, doesn't she,' he said. He bent over Gregory and patted his behind. Really it was only pretending. 'She does, doesn't she?' He thought of kneeling on Greg, but was afraid he might squash.

  Gregory snatched a handful of earth and threw it in his face. David tamed away spitting.

  'You don't scare me, see, an' you're not having my things!' Gregory shouted.

  David stepped backwards, swinging his satchel by the strap like a battle-axe. 'I'm going to have a real car faster than the lawn-mower. Your father's going to build a road for it round the lake so I can race.'

  'When are you having one?'

  'Next year,' David mid. 'I'm going to have a gun too. I might shoot you'

  'My dad's got a gun.' Gregory was holding his wee. He still had the ambulance up his jumper, the way a boy at school kept a mouse.

  'That's only an old one of ours' David said. He put his hands in his pockets to show he didn't have to keep things up his jumper. 'I'm having a new one from London. It'll kill you better.'

  'Why's your mum got no legs?' Gregory asked.

  David picked up the satchel again and swung it round his head. 'She has. It's just they don't work.'

  He swung the satchel faster and faster, wondering if it would lift him off the ground like a helicopter. Soon his arms began to ache. 'I don't want even the white tyres,' he said, stopping, and looking at Gregory. The ground under him seemed to be rocking as if he'd suddenly stood up in the boat on the lake. Gregory was quite still though. He just sat on the ground, holding the tip-up now as if he might throw that, and watching him.

  David started up the drive again, thinking about the words 'late' and 'legs'. In the break they'd been talking about him.

  He'd been in the playground under the window. 'Of course, they had him very late, I believe,' Miss Perry said. Then there was Miss Gardiner's voice, 'Isn't David an only child as well?' After that they'd made sort of clucking noises. 'It was a terrible beginning,' Miss Perry said. David didn't hear much more because he was watching a bee over the flower-bed. But then Miss Perry, voice suddenly said, very slowly, 'Poor woman!' It was shivery and sad like the whistle of a train before it goes into a tunnel. David wondered whether he should call it out aloud, now, to the bright park, to see whether it would sound the same here, and when he said it. He decided not to try.

  Without watching where he was going he found he had hit the bushes again. If he wanted to go straight he could put the satchel on his back. He supposed he didn't because it was more fun to go in curves. Anyway, after the next twist in the drive, he used the bias to pass the place where he'd killed the blackbird. When the stone hit it he couldn't believe that he'd thrown it. You could never catch birds because they always flew away. But this one fell over, quite still. He hadn't been able to move either. Then he did go up to it, although his whole body was trembling. Its eye was half closed and crinkled like a squashed raisin that was split a bit and shiny inside. Its feet seemed to have withered away.

  He was past the place and could see the house. From outside it looked heavy and dark. Inside it felt heavy and dark. In the music room he sometimes got under the piano because he thought the ceiling might slip down the walls. The windows seemed to be watching him as he turned the last comer in the drive, and he looked at the ground.

  He opened the door very carefully; listening for the wheelchair. The house was quite still. When he didn't know which room his mother was in, then she was somehow in all of them. There was none he could go into without the chair turning round. It was a square shape blocking the doorways and windows. When she was only talking she was shouting.

  David put his satchel down beside the thin basket that was full of guns and golf clubs. He took his spear. As soon as he was outside again he ran down the path to the lake, jumping into the air over the caterpillars because they were ten-foot high. Once or twice he looked back over his shoulder, but soon the windows were hidden behind trees. There was no sound by the lake. Far out the water was gold and bumpy in the sunshine, like pineapple skin. Near the bank it was clear and green. There were fish as thin as pencil-lead. They lay quite still in groups, then suddenly went wild, and seemed to be biting and chasing each other.

  David went to the boathouse where the lawn-mower was kept now. He unscrewed the cap and smelled the petrol. He tasted som
e on the tip of his finger. It was cold and sour. Coming out he found a cobweb on the back of the door. He scooped it up and it rolled into a sticky rope in his hand. The sun was bright after the darkness of the shed. David turned back inside to poison the tip of his spear with petrol. There was a swarm of midges like gold dust over the landing-stage. They were far too small.

  He set out to walk right round the lake. The flowers in this part of the park were nearly all daffodils, but he often got down on all fours to see if he could smell any difference between the yellow and the white ones. Sometimes he threw his spear at a bunch though always so as to miss it on purpose. By the time he got round the lake the sky had turned white and seemed to have grown larger. All at once birds began singing as if they'd been asleep before. In the kitchen garden Gregory's father was throwing something on to a bonfire. David watched through the tall iron gate. The smoke rose up in a thick yellow pillar, then turned brown, and spread out against the sky like fine strands of hair. Screwing up his eyes, David tried to see how high they got before they disappeared. The cook was calling him.

  'Coming!' he yelled at the top of his voice. As he raced up the path he shouted again. It would be terrible if they thought he'd got lost.

  'We were prisoners, Cole said witheringly. We were helpless, man! When the Japs seized our plantations it was useless to resist.'

  Cole sprawled in the big armchair in the prefects' room. He always bagged the best one. He wriggled down lower in it. The seat of his shorts seemed to have stuck to the cushion so that almost the full lengths of his legs were bare.

  'It was torture,' he said. 'Oh boy!' He looked up at the expectant faces and took a bite from a two-ounce bar of Cadbury's blended. It had just been tuck shop. Cole always got four ounces because he had his mother's sweet coupons too.

  'What happened when all the boys were lined up?' someone asked.

  'Our hands were tied behind our backs — with wire.' Cole said. He forced his wrists under the small of his back, and David watched, fascinated, as he writhed into the position. His knees lolled apart and then slapped together again. They were the colour of new pennies.

  Cole rolled his eyes. 'Then — then we put them out or they pulled them out. They came along the row touching them with their swords and shouting, "Go stiffer"'

  'In Japanese?'

  'Of course they said it in Japanese.'

  'How often did they do it?'

  'Five times a day,' Cole said,

  'Did all the men do this to the boys?' Mudd asked. He was serious and borrowed books from the staff Common room, Cole twisted his head to look at him. 'Yes.'

  'Shut up. Mudd, we want to hear,' someone else said.

  'Odd,' Mudd muttered, turning away. 'A few might. Or rather more, if they were hysterical.' He looked almost as if he didn't believe Cole. Then he seemed to have an idea, and turned back. 'Is that all they did? Didn't they sort of hug you?'

  'They were being dirty, man!' Cole shouted angrily. 'Whatever would they want to hug us for?'

  'So rats, Bookworm!' said Fielding, who was Cole's best friend. 'Go on, Coley. What happened when you, put them out?'

  'When they'd pulled them out, you mean,' another boy said. 'His hands were tied behind his back.'

  Cole looked at him dangerously.

  'There's something else,' Mudd said, coming back into the circle. 'What about the captured girls? There must have been some.'

  Everyone stared at him. Cole blushed.

  'Girls don't have them, bookworm squirt, so they didn't do anything to the girls.'

  Mudd had taken a book out of his locker and was running his finger down a page. 'You're revolting, Cole, he said slowly, without looking up.

  'Not me, man. Them!' Cole shouted.

  Mudd stopped moving his finger down the page of the book, 'I make it that when the Japanese were in Malaya you were four,' he said.

  'Oh, chuck him out, someone!' Cole snorted.

  Fielding pushed Mudd out of the room and carefully closed the door. Cole arched his body oft the scat of the chair, and then settled back more limply than before. David watched his lolling knees. His head felt light and he didn't think he could stand up much longer. Suddenly he left the room, shutting the door behind him. The southern English were very strange.

  He crossed the hall slowly with his hands plunged in his pockets; putting his feet carefully in front of each other, and trying to walk on only one of the brightly polished floorboards. Half-way across he stopped, balanced, listening to the tick of the clock that hung there. Through the window the winter evening had hardly any colour, like water paints spread on grey sugar-paper. David wished the evening was colder, and that the coldness would cool his body. His clothes felt warm and heavy. They clung to him almost as if he had fallen into a pond. He looked at his chest, half expecting to see steam seeping out from beneath his pullover. He thought perhaps he might melt completely away; overflow his shoes, and then go to fill the cracks between the shiny floor-boards that were loosely packed with dust. He shuddered, stood on one leg, and then lifted his whole weight on to his toes. It was no way for a senior to behave, but there was no one about. The exercise made him feel no better. If anything he felt worse. David kicked the lavatory door so fiercely that it hit the adjacent wall and bounced shut again. He kicked it several more times until the banging seemed to fill the building. Only when the increasing echo began to alarm him did he go into the lavatory and lock it. Then he had a better idea.

  He came out and went into the squits' playroom. There was ping-pong and fights and an awful row. He saw Gray, hobbling across the room on the sides of his shoes, and felt embarrassed. Even when he was pretending to be a crab or something Gray was as beautiful as a doll. He had on a white cricket pullover with a floppy collar. Just then he got down on his hands and knees, so perhaps he was being a polar bear. David walked slowly round the room, keeping his step very casual, and trying to will Gray to go away. When he turned round Gray had gone. David suddenly felt excited because he could do what he liked now. Almost, anyway.

  Hawkes was sitting on the window-seat watching the ping-pong. He had his fists in his pullover, making breasts, but no one was watching. David went up to him

  'Your sister's got red hair,' he said.

  Hawkes pulled the breasts out and looked up.

  'I said she's got red hair.'

  Hawkes kicked at him suddenly. David moved closer so he could hardly miss next time.

  'Peregrine!' David whispered. Really, he was being exceedingly unpleasant. It didn't do to think about that, though. Hawkes' next kick caught him on the thigh.

  'It's a fight, is it,' David said. He took the squit's wrists gently, and rolled back on to the floor, pulling him down on top of him. Hawkes tried to free his wrists and began thumping David's chest.

  'Always get shoved to the back of the tuck queue, don't you, ' David said settling himself more comfortably.

  Hawkes' knees dug into his ribs, and he clawed at David, pullover. He was beginning to lose his temper. 'You always barge! All the seniors barge!'

  David still held the squit's wrist, but pretended to be nearly beaten. He groaned. 'What you mustn't do is bounce ... bounce on my stomach ... that's not fair fighting…'

  Hawkes began to bounce on his stomach, and David easily slid the weight lower down his body. He watched Hawkes' tight mouth through half-closed eyes. It curved downwards like a bow. Suddenly he pressed the hack of his hand against the lips because he couldn't kiss them.

  David knew that he must split open. Perhaps his whole stomach might. It wouldn't matter now if the headmaster, wife and all the matrons came in in a file. Even if Gray came in he wouldn't care. He released the squit's wrists and locked his arms round his chest. He began pulling him down, waiting for their chests to touch ...

  David pushed Hawkes away. He drew up his knees and screwed up his eyes. A minute later he found saliva had trickled out of his mouth and turned cold on his chin. He rolled over on his stomach and felt like a jelly-f
ish. He was staying there till the prep bell went. The plop of ping-pong balls, and the row the squibs made, were far away.

  'Are you all right, Rogers? ... Rogers?'

  David didn't need to look up. He turned his head quickly so that Gray couldn't see the tears that suddenly soaked the cuff of his pullover. He wondered how long he'd been in the room, and his tears seemed to come faster. Opening his eyes a bit he could see Gray's feet. He was standing on the sides of his shoes again.

  'What's the matter? Did you trip or something?'

  David didn't answer. The blubbing began to shake his whole body but he couldn't stop it. He locked his head in both arms and licked the dust on the floor for something to do with his tongue. His blubs turned to hiccups, and then giggles. They were a mixture of all three because if he stood up Gray would probably think he'd wet his pants and was really a squit. But he didn't care. He knelt upright suddenly. Then he couldn't look at Gray higher than his nose. He tried to raise his eyes but they wouldn't go. He looked round instead. There was nobody near.

  'D'you want my tuck?'

  'Why? Don't you want it?' Gray asked.

  'It's only blended and smarties ... in my locker. I don't like them much. I don't really like them at all.' David still couldn't look higher than Gray's nose. Gray had brown eyes like a stuffed deer. David realised he had never known anyone with brown eyes before.

  'Gosh! Thanks then, Rogers!' Gray said. He ran away, properly on his feet this time.

  Outside the clouds had blown apart. There were only two squits left in the room. Where the light lay across a corner of the ping-pong table it was a brilliant emerald like the lawns at home in sunshine. David turned his face towards the window, and promptly sneezed. He groaned dramatically and let his forehead crash to the floor to see how much pain he could stand. He deserved it.

  Bruce Lang put down his pencil with a crack. 'If it's the price of peace in here, then take it' He opened the drawer of his desk and handed the tightly furled scroll to Parker over his shoulder. 'And for God's sake don't cut holes in it. I can't think why you never order your own.' He bent over his textbook again, which was all glass tubes and electrical wires. Parker opened the photo across his own desk, spreading out his arms to stop the ends springing together again. A couple of times he said, 'Wow! '