The Alteration

       'I am,' said Lyall, 'but not enough to check my purpose. Will you act for me, Collam? Or not?'

       'Yes, I'll act, though I promise nothing.'

       'I understand. I catch. Thank you.'

       'One hard condition: you must do nothing more. Make no other move. Approach no one else. Say not a word.'

       'I won't.'

       'Swear it.'

       'To you? In the name of what you call a lie?'

       'For yourself.'

       Lyall made the Sign of the Cross. 'I so swear, by Almighty God.'

       When his friend had gone, Brother Flackerty at once took a key from the ring at his waist and unlocked one of the bottom drawers of his desk. Opening it caused the ignition of gas-jets in its asbestos-lined interior. With a neat movement, he ripped from the manuscript book his notes on the Lyall matter and dropped them among the flames. As soon as there was nothing more to burn, he shut the drawer, thereby releasing a stream of compressed air. This blew the ashes through a fine wire mesh, so that when the tray underneath came to be removed for emptying, nothing would be left of them but a grey powder.

       In the afternoon of the next day of leisure at the Chapel, Hubert went through the courtyard arch and strolled over to the brewery. From it came a steady but intermittent creaking noise. One door stood open: Hubert peered round it and saw Ned in his usual brown work-shirt and trews, a dirty kerchief knotted at his throat, his hand on what was evidently a pump-handle. After a few minutes it had become clear that the brewer himself, unless in hiding or unconscious behind one of the coppers, was either on another floor of the building or altogether absent. Hubert stepped inside; Ned nodded morosely at him and went on pumping. He gave off a powerful odour, or mixture of several, that was not actually unpleasant. His height, muscular arms and slight mustach made him seem older than fourteen.

       'Where's your master?' asked Hubert.

       Ned grunted and screwed up his face in such a way as to suggest that they were in no danger of being interrupted, but that he was perfectly indifferent to this state of affairs.

       'What are you doing?'

       'Water got to go atop or a come down again.'

       'I see. Have you any of those books?'

       'Ah no.'

       When Hubert brought out and displayed two threepenny bits, the other, without the least change of demeanour, stopped his pumping at once and led the way to a metal ladder bolted to the wall. Up they went, through a cut-out in a wooden floor that supported a pair of large tuns, and finally to a space under the roof where there was a tank and a pile of sacks. From beneath a corner of this pile Ned produced something that had to be called a book, though it was very near returning to its constituent parts. Hubert looked at the crumpled title-page: The Orc Awakes, by J. B. Harris.

       'Sixpence,' said Ned.

       With no delay or objection, Hubert handed over his two coins. It seemed that Ned was surprised enough at this to show some momentary approvaclass="underline" his mouth twitched and he nodded several times as he released the book.

       'Ned, would you tell me something?'

       '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.