The Philosopher's Pupil (39 page)

‘Oh well - yes - but — '

‘Fortunately for you, I shall observe perfect discretion about your lapse.'

‘He asked me to treat it as a matter of confidence, but I didn't say I would — '

‘Any gentleman would respond — '

‘Damn it, I only got it a minute ago.'

‘I fail to see what difference that makes.'

‘I didn't have time to think!'

‘That shows that you are instinctively irresponsible, you cannot even be trusted for a minute.'

‘You're romantic about him, you wish he wanted to see you.'

‘Don't be a perfect fool.'

‘You're jealous!'

‘You're childish!'

‘You're sulky.'

‘Do you want a punch?'

‘You wouldn't punch anybody.'

‘Couldn't I — '

‘I said you wouldn't, not couldn't. Emma, don't be cross with me - you aren't cross, are you? We can't quarrel, we
can't
quarrel,
we
can't — '

Since the occasion of Tom's momentous visit to Emma's room, an uneasy odd relationship had existed between them. That, the visit, had been something noumenal, as if they had slipped out of time, out of ordinary individual being. They had not made love in any of the rather
mechanical
senses in which Tom had hitherto understood a
making
of love. It was rather that, instantly, they had become love. For Tom it was like being embraced by an angel, being inescapably held between the wings of an angel who was and was not Emma. This enfolding was perfect happiness, perfect bliss, perfect unproblematic, undramatic sexual joy. Tom could not remember having, after Emma took him in his arms, moved
at all.
As he recalled it, they had both lain, gripped together, absolutely motionless, in a spellbound ecstatic trance, perfectly relaxed yet also in extreme tension, in a holdingness of immense urgent power. In this entranced state Tom had fallen asleep. He had awakened near dawn and was at once aware of where he was and that Emma, still utterly close to him but no longer holding, was awake too. As soon as Emma felt Tom awakening he murmured to him, ‘Go, Tom, go.'

Tom instantly and obediently left Emma's bed and returned to his own where he fell at once into a blissful deep happy sleep from which he did not emerge until after eight o'clock.

He dressed quickly and ran out to the kitchen where he could already hear breakfast sounds. Emma, frying sausages, gave him a glance and a curt good morning. Emma, dressed in his suit, complete with waistcoat and watch chain, with his narrow rimless spectacles, looked alien, almost forbidding.

Tom said hello and sat down at the kitchen table. Then he got up and laid the table and fetched fruit juice from the fridge. He was given two sausages, said thank you, and ate them. Emma drank some fruit juice but did not eat or say anything or look at Tom.

At last Tom had said, ‘Thank you very very much for last night. But you're angry with me.'

Emma said, ‘Last night was
unique.
' After this he got up and went away into his room.

When he had gone Tom felt a dark, dense anguish curiously shot with joy. Later Emma emerged from his room and made some quite ordinary remarks and generally signalled the resumption of ordinary life, which Tom, rather to his surprise, found himself able to join in resuming. Since then they had carried on as before and yet not as before. There were no strange looks or new and unusual touches or contacts. It was rather as if they both moved more gracefully in an enlarged space. There was a new consciousness in the air; but this remained vague, and Emma's occasional ‘sulks' did not seem different in quantity or quality. At bedtime on the next day it had been somehow clear that Tom was to occupy his own bed and not Emma's. Tom was not upset. He lay in his bed and laughed quietly. And in the days that followed, during which ‘that night' was not referred to, he was not unhappy. He felt a diffused excitement, a sort of secretive tenderness, which increased his bodily well-being and his natural cheerfulness. Today (the day of the arrival of John Robert Rozanov's letter) Emma had been especially testy and touchy, but still without making any allusion to their ‘happening'. Would it now, Tom wondered, disappear undiscussed into the past, and become like a dream, gradually unhappening into oblivion?

‘Are you going?' said Emma.

‘To see Professor Rozanov? Certainly I am. Wouldn't you? I'm dying with curiosity.'

‘You could go now, this morning. It's not eleven yet. How long would it take you to get there?'

‘Twenty minutes. Whatever can it be? Could it be something
awful?
'

‘You mean like his having secretly married your mother?'

Tom began to laugh, then abruptly stopped. Good heavens! That he could not
endure;
but of course it was only a joke —

Emma went on. ‘Don't worry, if he had he would say “I have something to tell you”, not “I have something to ask you”.'

‘But what can he want to ask?'

‘Something about George?'

Tom felt suddenly disappointed, then frightened. ‘God. I hope not. I don't want to muck around with George's emotions. I mean - Christ, I hope George doesn't find out I've been visiting his guru - that
would
be trouble.'

‘You haven't visited him yet. Maybe it would be wise not to go.'

‘Oh I'm going! I'm going now!'

‘You ought to shave.'

Tom ran to the bathroom and shaved carefully and combed his hair.

‘
And
put on a tie.'

Emma was looking round the bathroom door and Tom could now see Emma's face wearing its old familiar quizzical mocking look. He turned and went to his friend and put his arms around his neck.

‘Emma, all right, I'm not going to talk about it if you don't want, but something or other did occur, heavens knows what, and I just want you to know that I'm not worrying about it at all and that the most important aspect of the matter as far as I'm concerned is that I love you.'

‘I love you too, you dope, but nothing follows from that except that.'

‘Well, isn't that rather a lot? And that night — '

‘A
hapax legomenon.
'

‘What's that?'

‘Something that only occurs once.'

‘You mean like the birth of Jesus Christ?'

‘Don't be damn silly about this — '

‘Well, the world can be changed — '

‘Oh just shut up, will you. Put a tie on.'

Tom found a tie. ‘Do you think I should clean my shoes?'

‘No. You aren't visiting God.'

‘Oh. Aren't I? Will you walk with me?'

‘No. Clear off.'

By the time Tom McCaffrey had reached John Robert Rozanov's door he had worked himself up into a fair fever. He had pictured every sort of embarrassing, maddening, painful, disastrous business involving George, Rozanov, and himself. Rozanov wanted him to tell George never to communicate with him again. Rozanov wanted him to console George and ask him not to be too upset because Rozanov was too busy to see him any more. (Tom could imagine how George would greet such an embassy.) Rozanov wanted him to instruct George to print some public amendment of some article in which George had misrepresented or plagiarized Rozanov. Trying in desperation to think of something that Rozanov might want which was
not
connected with George, his disturbed fantasy put forward the idea that perhaps John Robert was about to reveal that he was really Tom's father! Tom had never entertained this speculation before and did not now entertain it for long. It was promptly driven from his head by the indignant shade of Alan McCaffrey, assisted by that of Fiona Gates. Love for his parents suddenly filled Tom's soul, disturbing him even more. And these two, as they had always been, comforting and benign ghosts, gave Tom a heightened sense of the vulnerability of happiness and of how dangerous and unpredictable and just bloody tiresomely powerful this eccentric philosopher might prove to be.

Arrived at the door of 16 Hare Lane, he dabbed nervously at the bell, which made a tiny grunt. He pushed it again harder and longer and produced a loud impertinent hiss. The door opened instantly and was filled by the stout burly form of the philosopher.

John Robert said nothing, but stepped awkwardly backward into the dark hall to make way for Tom who stepped awkwardly forward into the space. John Robert then moved backwards, followed by Tom, to the door of the sitting-room, then turned his back on the boy and blundered forward into the room.

Outside, a brilliant April light dazzlingly displayed blue sky, fast white cloudlets, the Cox's Orange tormented by wind, a disconsolate fence with slats missing, unkempt ruffled damp grass. The room by contrast was dark, low-ceilinged and narrow, the tiny grate and mantelpiece like a slit.

John Robert said, ‘Please sit down. Please - sit - down — '

Tom took in two hopeless slumping low-slung armchairs, and since he had to obey the command rapidly, reached out and seized from beside John Robert an extremely rickety upright chair which he placed on a black lumpy rug beside the fireplace and sat down.

John Robert looked at the armchairs, made as if to sit on the arm of one and decided not to. Tom leapt up.

‘No - you sit - I'll - there's another chair - in the hall — '

John Robert pushed past Tom who was still standing, and returned with another upright chair which he put with its back to the window. He then closed the door into the hall. They both sat down.

Tom felt he should say something, so said ‘Good morning', which sounded rather stilted. He had not only never spoken to Rozanov before, he had never been at close quarters with him or had an opportunity to inspect his face. This in fact was difficult to do now with the dazzling light behind, and the moving clouds making the room seem to tilt like a ship laid over.

‘Mr McCaffrey,' said the philosopher. ‘I hope very much that you will excuse the liberty - if it is a liberty - of my asking you to hear - what I want to say — '

Tom felt a pang of fear which he had recognized as a pang of
guilt.
It had not occurred to him in his imaginings as he walked along that John Robert might want to
accuse
him of something. What had he done? What
could he
have done, to harm, hurt, annoy, incense this great man - or to make the great man imagine that he had been harmed or hurt and could justly be annoyed or incensed? Tom searched his conscience, at once a prey to vague huge remorse. Where in his imperfect conduct could this fault lie? Did John Robert think that Tom had encouraged George to - or told George that —? But almost at once, as he confusedly accused himself of he knew not what, he was aware that John Robert was himself upset, perhaps even nervous.

‘Please — ' said Tom, ‘there's nothing you could - I mean if there's anything - I could do - or — '

‘There is,' said Rozanov, ‘something that you could do — ' He stared at Tom, wrinkling up his pitted brow, his big moist prehensile lips thrust forward.

Tom thought: Oh God. It
is
about George.

‘Before I explain - or at any rate - before I - introduce - what I want to - I hope you will not mind if I ask you a few simple questions.'

‘No.'

‘And may I say, as I said in my letter, that I desire - indeed I require - that you should regard everything that is said in this room as strictly confidential, or to use a simpler and stronger word, as a
secret.
You understand what that means?'

‘Yes.'

‘You will not speak of this conversation with
anybody!
'

‘Yes. I mean no, I won't — ' It did not occur to Tom to query this requirement, which after all, since nothing had yet been revealed, might have seemed unreasonable, so much was he already under the spell of the philosopher. In any case, he would have promised as much and more at that moment, so great was his curiosity.

‘I want to ask you, then, these questions, which I believe you will answer truthfully.'

‘Yes - yes — '

‘How old are you?'

‘Twenty.'

‘And in good health? Well, obviously you are.'

‘Yes.' Tom thought, he wants me to go on an expedition to find something, buried treasure in California, for instance.

‘You are at the university in London?'

‘Yes.'

‘What are you studying?'

‘English.'

‘Do you enjoy your work?'

‘Yes, on the whole.'

‘What sort of degree will you get?'

‘Second-class.'

‘How will you earn your living?'

‘I don't know yet.'

‘What would you like to do?'

‘I'd like to be a writer.'

‘A writer?'

Tom thought, he wants me to write his biography! What perfect fun, trips to America —

‘What have you written so far?'

‘Oh, just poems and one or two stories —'

‘Have you published anything?'

‘Just one poem in the
Ennistone Gazette.
But of course, I think I could write
anything
- I'm interested in biography — '

‘You don't want to be a philosopher, do you?'

‘No-no, I don't.'

‘Good. Would you say that you were a cheerful person?'

‘Oh yes. I think I'd be a good travelling companion.'

‘A good travelling companion.' John Robert was interested in this point.

‘Oh yes, I'm awfully good-tempered and practical— ' John Robert and Tom, his biographer, secretary, his privileged aide, travelling about America, but the world, together … George would be furious. Oh God, George. But could it all be somehow about George after all? Perhaps he wants me to be George's
keeper?
Tom gazed fascinated at John Robert's huge face and fierce yellow-brown eyes and red lips pouting with will.