Shape of Snakes

Renaissance atelier in Italy but for the polythene canopy, the uniform prevalence of T-shirts and jeans, and the fact that half the sculptors were women.

It was situated in a sheltered gulley, and Danny stood out from the rest of the group, not just because he'd positioned himself near the entrance but because his block of stone was three times the size of anybody else's. It was also a great deal more advanced. Where most of the others were still working to establish basic form, Danny had already released a bespectacled head and upper torso from the limestone's grip and was using a claw chisel to give grained texture to the skin of the face.

He looked up as we approached. 'What do you think?' he asked, stepping back and letting his hands fall to his sides, unsurprised that we'd come to admire his work. His physique interested me. I was amazed by how well developed his shoulders and arms were without a jacket to hide them.

'Excellent,' observed Sam with the overdone bonhomie that he reserved for men he didn't know very well. 'Who is it? Anyone we know?'

A scowl of irritation narrowed Danny's eyes.

'Mahatma Gandhi,' I said, casting a quick verifying glance at the drawings and photographs on the ground beside him. I didn't need to. The likeness was there, even if more reliant on intuition than reality. 'It's an ambitious subject.'

That didn't please him either. 'I can tell you're a teacher,' he said witheringly, glancing toward the canopy where instructors were passing on advice and help to the other students. 'That's what they keep telling me.'

I eyed him curiously. 'Why don't you take it as a compliment?'

He shrugged. 'Because I know a put-down when I hear it.'

'You're too sensitive,' I said. 'In my case it's a spur to keep you going. You're obviously the star here-head and shoulders above the others-and unless you're blind and stupid you must recognize the fact.'

'I do.'

'Then stop bellyaching and prove you can cope with an ambitious subject.' I ran a finger along the larger-than- life spectacles which grew at a forty-five-degree angle from the wrinkled stone cheeks. 'How did you do these?'

'Carefully,' he said, more serious than ironic.

I smiled. 'Weren't you afraid of knocking them off?'

'I still am.'

'There's a bronze statue of Gandhi in Ladysmith in South Africa. It commemorates the ambulance corps that he set up there during the Boer War. It's the only other one I've ever seen of him.'

'How does it compare?'

'With this one?'

He nodded. I might have mistaken his question for arrogance if the muscles in his shoulders had been less rigid or his scowl less ferocious. He is preparing to defend himself again, I thought.

'It's a thoroughly professional life-size representation in bronze of a tiny little man who did his duty by the Empire after accepting British citizenship,' I said. 'But that's all it is. It gave me no sense of his greatness, no sense of the extraordinary effect his humility had on the world, no sense of inner strength.' I moved my fingers to touch the rough limestone face. 'Gandhi was a giant with no pretensions. For myself, I'd rather have him larger- than-life and rough-hewn in stone than realistically small and neatly polished in bronze.'

His scowl relaxed. 'Will you buy it?'

I shook my head regretfully.

'Why not? You just said you liked it.'

'Where would I put it?'

'In your garden.'

'We don't have a garden. We're only renting the farmhouse for the summer. After that'-I shrugged-'who knows? If we're lucky we may be able to afford a brick box with a tablecloth for a garden and a few roses 'round the border ... and, frankly, a bust of Mahatma Gandhi in the middle of it would look very out of place.'

He was disappointed. 'I thought you were loaded.'

'Sadly not.'

He pulled out his cigarettes. 'Just keeping up appearances, eh?'

'Something like that.'

'Ah, well,' he said with resignation, bending his head to shield his lighter from the wind. 'Maybe I'll give him to you for free.' He blew smoke through his nose. 'It'll cost me an arm and a leg to get him back to London, and the chances are the specs'll get knocked off in the process. You can start a collection ... put him next to Alan's Quetzalcoatl ... make the Slaters famous for something other than drugs, burglary and wife-beating...'

I suggested we treat Danny to lunch at the Sailor's Rest in Weymouth but Sam wasn't keen. 'The food's good,' he admitted, 'but the landlord's an asshole.'

'I think you already know him,' I told Danny as we made our way back to the car. 'He's the policeman who got Alan sent down. I thought it might amuse you to see him in different surroundings.' I interrupted the silence that followed this remark to point at the wreck of a Viking long ship that was creatively cast upon some rocks to our left. 'That's a clever use of materials,' I murmured.

'What's his name?' asked Danny.

'James Drury. He was a uniformed sergeant in Richmond until he was forced to take early retirement and took himself off to train as a pub manager for Radley's Brewery. They started him off in Guildford, then moved him to the