The Philosopher's Pupil (16 page)

‘George tried to drown her,' said Brian.

‘I must be off,' said Father Bernard. He moved and his blackness faded from the room. Adam and Zed ran after him.

Brian said to Ruby, ‘Can't you find something to do, Ruby? Go and polish something. There must be something to clean somewhere.'

Ruby gravely set herself in motion. Tom touched her as she went out. He looked at the angry pock-marked face of his brother but did not speak. Gabriel came back. She knew from Tom's look that Brian had ‘said something'.

Gabriel said brightly to Tom, ‘What about the girl? Have you brought her?'

‘The girl —?'

‘Yes,' said Brian, ‘Emma.'

‘Oh good heavens,' said Tom, ‘Emma - I
forgot
- how stupid.'

He ran from the room.

‘You told him — ' said Gabriel.

‘Oh hang it, what does it matter?' said Brian. ‘Someone is bound to tell him. What does it matter, what does anything matter? We're too fastidious, we're too particular, we're too fine, in a world reeling with violence and starvation and filth of every sort. What does it
matter
what George does? I'm sick of George, Stella is sick of George, I'm going out for a walk.'

But before he could leave, Tom came back accompanied by a tall thin youth with pale blond hair and narrow rimless spectacles.

‘This is my friend Emmanuel Scarlett-Taylor.'

Brian said, ‘Oh dear,' then covered it with a cough. There were friendly exclamations and hand-shakes, during which Scarlett-Taylor gave one abrupt smile but said nothing.

Gabriel said, ‘Have you been to Belmont yet, shouldn't you ring Alex and say you're coming?'

‘Oh we won't be at Belmont,' said Tom. ‘We're house-sitting.'

‘What?'

‘Greg and Judy Osmore are away. They said we could look after their house. Here's the key.' He flourished the key.

Gregory Osmore was the younger son of Robin Osmore the solicitor.

‘I think Alex is expecting you,' said Gabriel, ‘so you'd better ring up and say you're
not
coming.'

‘But we've come!'

‘Not coming to stay, I mean.'

‘I said as much,' said Scarlett-Taylor to Tom.

‘Oh well, I
will
ring Alex,' said Tom, ‘only not now, Gabriel,
please
— '

Scarlett-Taylor's brief remark had betrayed that he was Irish. Brian with his usual quick tact said, ‘You're Irish.'

‘Yes.'

‘How nice,' said Gabriel. ‘The Emerald Isle. A hundred thousand welcomes, isn't it? We had such a lovely holiday in Killarney once.'

‘It rained all the time,' Brian said, smiling wolfishly.

Scarlett-Taylor looked at Tom.

‘We must be going,' said Tom. ‘We've got this house to sit.'

Adam and Zed came in.

Tom said, ‘This is Adam.'

‘Dog,' said Scarlett-Taylor. ‘
Papillon.
' He picked Zed up.

‘Zed,' said Adam.

Scarlett-Taylor then smiled his real smile, which was rather logical and intellectual, the smile of an older man. He handed Zed to Adam with a graceful formal gesture.

Adam did not smile, but looked approving.

‘What are you going to
do
here?' said Brian.

‘Do?' The question puzzled Tom. ‘Oh - have fun.'

They all reached the front door. ‘Come and see us.'

‘Yes, sure.'

Brian, as the door closed, said, ‘Fun? What's that? Ah, youth, youth. Oh God, Ruby's still here, can't you get rid of her? And Stella's upstairs! I'd forgotten that too!'

Tom pressed the key, which he had proudly waved before his brother, into the lock and turned it. It functioned. The door opened. Tom had not quite believed beforehand that this would happen. It was like something in a fairy-tale which was too good to be true. Some demon or wicked godmother would put a binding spell upon the door, or else it would open upon some weird alien scene, empty or else full of silent hostile people, then closing again, quietly and irrevocably, behind the hapless hero. None of this happened. The door opened. The rather dark interior of the house was recognizably that of Greg and Judy Osmore. It was also immediately clear that the house was empty. It smelt empty, already a little musty and full of echoes. Another less far-fetched of Tom's fears had been that it would turn out that Greg and Judy were still there and had not gone away at all.

‘Whoopee,' said Tom, softly and appreciatively, standing in the hall.

Emma followed him in.

Tom did not in fact know Gregory Osmore very well, but he had known him all his life, and in Ennistone that counted for a lot. Meeting Greg recently at a party in London, he had heard him lamenting about having to leave his house empty while he spent a month in America, with Judy, on a business course. Burglary and vandalism, once unknown in the town, were on the increase. Tom saw, quick as a flash, that sublime concatenation of duty and interest for which we so often wait in vain. He offered his services. He would spend the vacation working in Greg's house and keeping it safe and happy. Greg and Ju agreed. For Tom, the plan had everything. Apart from anything else, it provided a very good excuse for not staying at Belmont. Alex would probably have put up with Scarlett-Taylor, but would Scarlett-Taylor have put up with Alex? Tom wanted to show his native town to his new friend. On the Belmont basis he had envisaged only a brief visit. Now, however, given this glorious independence, they could spend the whole vacation there, see a bit of the countryside, be amused by the dear silly old town, and get away from their cramped dingy London digs and their censorious landlady.

Tom and (to use his nickname) Emma were at the same college in London. Emma was a little older, now in his third year of studying History. Tom was in his first year of studying English. They had known each other vaguely for a while, then lately much better after Emma had taken lodgings in the same house as Tom. Emma wanted to see the Ennistone antiquities and to visit the Museum. He did not imagine he would be very interested in the Ennistonians whom Tom promised him as the chief entertainment. Emma looked a little critically upon Tom's tendency to like everything and everybody.

‘Our house,' said Tom. ‘Our very own for now. Oh good!'

He had never in his life been the proprietor of so much domestic space. He began to run about, opening doors, peering into cupboards, racing up and down stairs.

Emma glanced into the sitting-room, then found Greg's study and began to look at the books. He noted with pleasure a number of historical works. (Greg had studied History at York.) Emma went over the shelves systematically. He pulled out Pirenne's
History of Europe
and sat down, and was instantly absorbed in reading.

Meanwhile Tom was in a state of rapture. He investigated the kitchen. No crouching in grates or cooking on gas rings here. Tom liked cooking, in a random eccentric sort of way. He investigated the larder and the fridge. He went into the sitting-room and studied all the pictures and ornaments. He had been in the house before, of course, but only on social occasions, and he had never seen the sitting-room empty. Tom liked pictures, he liked things, he appreciated the visual world. He would have liked to be a rich man and be able to collect. However, he had no plans for becoming a rich man; he had as yet no plans.

Greg and Judy, who were still childless, lived in a pleasant part of Ennistone, on the far side of the town from the Common on the way towards the Tweed Mill. This area was called, for some reason, Biggins, and consisted largely of Victorian terrace houses, lately gentrified, their brick façades painted different colours. Of course
the
place to live in Ennistone was the Crescent, near the eighteenth-century bridge, the abode of Eastcotes and Newbolds and Burdetts. However, there were parts of Biggins which were regarded as very desirable residential areas, quite the equal of Victoria Park. The ‘best road', called Travancore Avenue in memory of some Ennistonian who had served the Raj in that city, started in some splendour near the Crescent and ended more humbly but agreeably enough on the edge of the countryside, with views of the Tweed Mill. House agents described the residences, all sought after, as being ‘at the Crescent end' (or ‘adjoining the fashionable Crescent') or ‘at the Tweed Mill end'. Ivor Sefton occupied a late eighteenth-century villa at the Crescent end. The Gregory Osmores lived in a pretty little detached house behind plane trees at the Tweed Mill end. Greg had purchased this house when, after working in London as an accountant, he had (quite recently) become an all-purpose businessman in the management of the Glove Factory, where, it was said, he was certain to become quite a ‘big cheese'. His elder brother, equally successful, was a barrister in London.

Tom inspected the bedrooms. There were four, all good rooms. All the beds were made up with clean sheets. Excluding Greg and Ju's room, Tom liked best the one with the view over the garden, though the front ones were nice too, whence the minaret chimney of the Tweed Mill was visible between the planes. He decided to let Emma choose. Biggins occupied a ‘healthy eminence', and standing at the back window Tom could see most of the principal monuments of Ennistone: the Institute, the gilded cupola of the Hall, the blunt grey tower of St Olaf's, the striated spire of St Paul's (Father Bernard's ‘shop'), the thin spire of the Catholic ‘tin church' in Burkestown, the bulky Methodist church in Druidsdale, the Friends' Meeting House, Bowcocks department store, the gasworks, the Glove Factory (a castellated nineteenth-century brick building) and the new controversial Polytechnic building beyond the Common.

Tom inspected the bathroom. The bathroom at his London digs (near Kings Cross) was a squalid penitential room, not clean and probably not cleanable, shared by a number of male lodgers. The Greg and Ju bathroom was a bower of luxury (Judy had a thing about baths) with the king-size bath set low in the tiled floor, and a matching basin
and
bidet all made of curiously fat and sensuously rounded red porcelain. The tiles were black. The taps and towel-rails were made of (presumably imitation) gold. Fat fluffy black towels trimmed with red hung from the rails. Upon a gleaming black shelf was a row of jars and bottles containing (Tom had no doubt and he soon checked) celestial unguents. A tiled curtained archway concealed a shower, another such archway the loo. Tom decided that he must have a bath
at once.
He began to run the water, pouring in the oil and wine of the unguent shelf. A heavenly smell arose.

While this was making he went into Greg and Ju's bedroom and opened the sliding door of the huge wall cupboard which ran the length of the room. A glittering array of garments met his eye. Both Greg and Judy were vain about their appearance; they were a handsome pair and loved clothes. Tom feasted his gaze upon Greg's numerous well-tailored suits (he
never
wore jeans), sleek evening dress, fancy shirts, some with
lace.
A thousand silk ties. Ju's clothes were nice, too, and smelt nice. She wore very feminine stuff with flounces, tucks, ruffs, gathers, nonsense, which she wore long and pulled in with little belts, to her slim waist. In winter she wore fine light tweed dresses over brilliantly coloured blouses with smart scarves even silkier than Greg's ties. Her summer dresses were made of that sort of feather-weight polyester which is what cotton is like when it goes to heaven. Tom fingered some of these dresses and sighed. He reflected that these yummy clothes must represent Greg and Judy's
second
team. The first team was even now gladdening the eyes of Americans in Florida.

As the clothes slid silently and easily along the rail upon their sleek hangers, Tom's hand fastened on something which looked as if it was made of feathers and felt as if it was made of gauze. He drew it out: a very pale blue
négligé
with multiple cufflets and collarettes. He thrust his hands into the sleeves and pulled it on and gazed at himself in the long swinging mahogany-framed mirror which must so often have reflected that beautiful and fortunate pair. With his tumbling curly locks and his smooth fresh complexion Tom looked, well, quite extraordinary. He looked at himself for a moment with surprise and admiration, then decided to go and show himself to Emma. He skipped daintily down the stairs and flounced into the study.

‘Aren't I lovely?'

Emma was still reading. He read: ‘Luther was merely advancing still further upon the path which had been trodden before his time by Wycliffe and John Huss. His theology was a continuation of the dissident theology of the Middle Ages; his ancestors were the great heretics of the fourteenth century; he was absolutely untouched by the spirit of the Renaissance. His doctrine of justification by faith was related to the doctrines of the mystics, and although, like the humanists, though for very different reasons, he condemned celibacy and the ascetic life, he was in absolute opposition to them in his complete sacrifice of free will and reason to faith. However, the humanists did not fail to applaud his sensational debut.' He looked up. He was not pleased to see Tom in drag. Emma himself suffered from secret transvestite fantasies; Tom's caprice struck him as the idle profanation of a mystery. He said coldly, ‘You ought to telephone your mother.'

‘Not now,' said Tom.

‘Yes, now.'

‘Oh, all right.'

The telephone was in the hall.

As Tom dialled the number his heart sank. It also beat faster. He hated the telephone. He particularly hated talking to Alex on it. He felt guilty at not being at Belmont, at not having told her, at a hundred matters arising from his imperfect conduct.

‘Yes?' said Alex at the other end. She always said ‘Yes?' in that disconcerting way.

‘Hello, it's me, Tom.'

‘Where are you, when are you coming?'

‘Look, I'm sorry, I should have told you.'

‘What?'