More Spirit Than Animal

THE APPLE OF DISCORD

The view was classic Oxford. The sun was rising over a rich landscape of spires and stone. And in Broad Street, where the martyrs died, the Sheldonian Theatre stands like an old actor in the wings, judging the passing shadows as the city is painted in light. But as the veil is lifted I see that the oolitic limestone walls are obliterated by wild primal art.

From the octagonal cupola above Wren's ingenious roof I watch the armed men on the buildings either side. The college parapets and crenellations provide perfect cover as they charge their automatic weapons. During a long and restless night I had neither seen or heard their arrival.

We have passed the point of no return. Dawn has come with an army.

Looking back I can recall the chink of ice and the mesmeric rush of the Thames as the last moments of what I would fondly call my previous life. Overlooking the wine dark stretch of English water it was as though it's very passing washed away the anxieties and the inconsistencies of an otherwise ordinary existence. A dreamlike idyll that turned out to be nothing more than another man's dream.

'What would you have my boy....you look like a malt man......allow me?'

Relaxed and presumptuous his voice invited compliance. The crystal glass and the smile obscured by the albedo of the man's own radiance or more accurately his power to absorb the light of another man's star. The gesture both contractual and passive. Taker and receiver. And yet it would seem so much less.

'Thank you sir,' I said

'Oh...Donald please...'

'Yes sir.....Donald.'

The convivial smile, an extended arm to lightly engage my shoulder. Reassurance and control.

'Walk with me son...'

Donald Zander, a man you could never imagine being alone with. As powerful as he was anonymous the enigma was overwhelming and it was all I could do to maintain any sort of poise. I guess he was a man who enjoyed the company of the receptive disciple, the conditional bon homie, the establishment of boundaries, holding my younger soul up to the light. He gestured with an understated sweep of the arm.

'What do you see Peter...?'

The balcony ran the entire length of the river side property, overlooking the long lawn fringed in willows, draping fronds in the water over the mooring site just a few steps down from the flood bank. Outbuildings right and left spoke of extracurricular interests that would for the moment lay beyond the scope of our conversation.

The grey stubble, the lithe angular body, the mellifluous voice and the ever-reasonable expression were disarming. Close up he spoke from a thousand miles away as if he were not actually there at all. It was a disconcerting experience to be physically close but disengaged somehow. He also had a way of glancing at you at unexpected moments as if you had said...or thought something he did not approve of. He was nothing but avuncular but the experience was disconcerting. How could a boy like me have anything meaningful to say to a man like Zander?

And yet there we were sharing a drink and the cool Thames air. To read a man is to see into his soul and Zander, showed you what you wanted to see... what he thought you needed to see. And that didn't include a soul.

'More than the river?' Peter wondered.

Zander nodded benignly.

'A sight many a man would pay a great deal for sir...Donald.'

'True enough, but look harder, think about what you actually see...'

'I really can't say....'