The Philosopher's Pupil (42 page)

‘Leave me out. And don't expect me to help you later when you're wishing like hell you'd followed my advice!'

‘Of course I shall expect you to help me! Calm down. Why are you so excited?'

But Tom was shaken by Emma's attack, not least because he saw the good sense in it. There
could
indeed be some sort of nasty mess: he preferred not to imagine the details. But he knew that he was caught; his curiosity, his vanity, a dotty sense of adventure, a sense of fate, urged him on. It was as if his
value
had been changed, and John Robert had made him a new person. How could he, having in his thought, even for this short time,
touched this
seventeen-year-old girl,
promise
as John Robert required (and he would have had to promise) not ever to come to know her? This prohibition alone was enough to ‘set him on'. And if he refused, he could never now be as he was. Some uncanny magic was already at work. He might indeed regret having tried, but he would even more, and bitterly, regret having funked the challenge. If he refused he would ‘lose' Rozanov: Rozanov whom even this morning he had cared nothing about, had lived contentedly without, and who now represented some sort of necessity. He was no longer free, he was even perhaps no longer innocent: no longer happy.

Emma said, ‘And he told you not to tell anyone.'

‘Yes.'

‘You scoundrel.'

‘You won't tell. It's like talking to myself or God. Come, let's make up, let's sing, let's sing that German round you taught me. I'll begin.'

Tom began to sing softly,

‘Alles schweiget. Nachtigallen

Locken mil süssen Melodien

Tränen ins Auge

Sehnsucht ins Herz.'

When he had sung the round through and started again Emma joined in, not using his full voice but with a high clear pure whispering sound. And by the time they turned into Travancore Avenue, although there were not positively tears in their eyes, there was a great deal of mournful yearning in their hearts.

‘My God, it
is
snowing!'

An awful iron grey silence had possessed the town since early morning. The sky, appearing like a dull solid dome low over the roofs, had been grey, then yellowish, then almost white. Now scarcely visible very small snowflakes were dancing up and down like midges. As Brian and Gabriel watched them (it was lunch time) they (the snowflakes) were to be seen, not as it seemed falling, but jigging about just above the pall of steam which (as the temperature fell in the direction of zero) once again covered the surface of the open-air pool.

‘Snow in April!'

‘It can snow any time in this bloody country.'

Brian and Gabriel returned to the little white cast- Iron table, covered with circular brown stains, at which they had been sitting and drinking tea out of plastic cups. The white snowy light revealed in terrible detail the pale stained flaky green walls of the Promenade and the cold, wet brasswork of the lion disgorging Ennistone water into a kind of sink. Zed, established upon one of the chairs, was with them today. Dogs were allowed, in the Promenade only, upon leads. Gabriel had brought him with her, from her shopping and his run in the Botanic Garden, and had given up her swim so as to sit with him over coffee, waiting for Brian and Adam to arrive. Adam was still out there swimming, somewhere underneath the roly-poly blanket of the steam. Gabriel banished from her mind rapid mental movies of Adam drowned, his limp body lifted from the water, et cetera. She returned to the topic of the seaside visit. Brian detested this topic and refused to help her to think about it. He sat scratching his pockmarked face with blunt, audible fingernails, and glaring unseeingly in the direction of Gavin Oare and Maisie Chalmers who were giggling at a corner table, and of Mrs Bradstreet who was drinking some of the sulphurous water and brooding over her terrible secret.

‘If we want to go to a hotel we ought to book now.'

‘One day's enough, isn't it?'

‘I think it would be fun to go to a hotel — '

‘I don't. Why go at all?'

‘Well, it's a family tradition. Alex sets store by it.'

‘I don't think Alex “sets store by it”, whatever that means. With Maryville gone it's pointless anyway.'

‘We did it last year without Maryville.'

‘And what a frost it was.'

‘I don't think so — '

‘I know why you want it.'

‘Why?'

‘Because you want George to come.'

‘Don't be silly!' It's true, thought Gabriel, but not in a bad way. It was so important to let George know that they cared.

‘I've never seen such a dog for playing.'

‘Yes, remember when we watched him through the kitchen window playing there all by himself— '

Zed, fluffed up on top of Gabriel's shopping bag, had his roosting bird look. He had what Gabriel called his ‘winsome look', his black lip a little curled to show a flash of teeth, his blue-black shot-silk eyes staring flirtatiously at his admirers. He touched the handle of the bag with one tentative white paw, stared at Gabriel, then patted it twice as if inviting co-operation in a game or ritual.

‘Zed! Where's bailie?'

‘Don't excite him, Gabriel.'

‘Zed, you darling, kiss hands!'

‘Soppy little blighter. There are small dogs, but this is ridiculous. A miserable sissie little object that couldn't defend itself— '

‘Dogs in Ennistone don't have to fight for their lives!' She added, ‘Oh dear.' Such a tiny defenceless
crushable
animal. Oh
dear.

‘He's not a dog, he's a cuddly toy. Adam treats him like a toy.'

‘Adam treats everything like a toy.'

‘How does such a ridiculous little animal know that it's a dog at all? Put him down, he's sitting on the cheese.'

Gabriel put Zed on the ground where he immediately began to frisk and dance at her feet, moving his round black and white rump voluptuously, as a preparation for attempting to jump up. She lifted him on to her knee where he settled himself, staring with intense insolent private amusement at Brian.

‘We could stay at that little hotel — '

‘I'm not paying out money for hotels.'

‘Then if we go for the day — '

‘What's the use of a day? We'd spend half the time getting there and getting back.'

‘No we wouldn't. It's very quick now by the motorway. And a day by the sea is - so special - if we're all together. Brian, please don't say no. It's our
only
family thing except Christmas, and you know how much I enjoy Christmas.'

‘And you know how much I hate it! Alex hates it too, remember how she wrecked the last one.'

‘Don't be cross, I have to organize this because nobody else will, like I have to organize Christmas because nobody else will. You're all glad enough when I've done it!'

‘You deceive yourself.'

‘Tom suggested we should take tents and camp.'

‘Oh
did
he!'

‘I'll make the sandwiches, Ruby will help, you know how she enjoys it — '

‘You're always
imagining
that other people
enjoy
things, but they are
not
like
you!
'

‘Well, they're not like you either, you don't enjoy anything!'

‘I used to enjoy things, but they've all gone, the nice things, like waltzing with you at the
thé dansants
we used to have in this room before everything got so awful.'

Gabriel was touched by this memory. She too had enjoyed the sentimental old
thé dansants
with the three-piece orchestra. ‘Darling! And the tangos and the sambas and the rumbas and the slow fox-trot — '

‘No. Only the waltzes. But they've gone. We shall never waltz again. Oh
God,
must you
cry
about it?'

I'm not just crying about that, thought Gabriel, though I am crying about that. Why am I always so near to tears? It annoys Brian so. Are other people's lives like mine - always so near to the edge of something infinitely touching, awfully moving and significant and sort of deep - Can it be God? No, it is too small.

Adam had been upset this morning because Gabriel had destroyed his ‘bear'. This ‘bear' was a smudge upon the kitchen wall which resembled a bear, which had somehow become Adam's property. Busily cleaning, Gabriel had accidentally mopped his bear away. He's like me, she thought, and yet with him it's different. He loves all sorts of funny little things which are almost non-things. For him the world is full of such things. He owns the world - it's always
his
blackbird that's singing,
his
spider that has made a web in the corner. The thought about the lost bear reminded her somehow that last night she had dreamed about Rufus, and in the dream he was her son. She often had this dream, which she told to no one.

There was something else too, something which had just happened as she sat at the table in the Promenade waiting for Brian to join her. An Indian man, perhaps a Pakistani, a thin, youngish man with a beard, had sat down opposite to her, as she sat reading the
Ennistone Gazette,
and asked her one or two trivial questions. Gabriel had answered his questions briefly and gone on reading. She did not easily talk to strange men. After a short while the ‘intruder' went away. A few minutes later, after he had disappeared, and just before Brian came, Gabriel put down her paper, penetrated by a terrible pang of conscience. The man had been lonely, perhaps he had only lately arrived in England, a new immigrant, living alone, made to feel unwanted, looked askance at, victimized. His trivial questions were an appeal, for conversation, for human contact, for a smile, for a
look.
Perhaps he had thought she had a kind face. And she had utterly failed, she had been curt, almost rude. And now he was gone, and that precious moment would never come to her again. This too was what made tears come into her eyes when Brian recalled the
thé dansants.

Father Bernard was standing at the long window of the Promenade looking at the fascinating play of the tiny snowflakes which, in the very cold windless air, seemed unable to decide whether to go up or down. Some however must be reaching the ground since the edge of the pool was white, blotched and criss-crossed with the dark prints of bare feet. As he watched, Tom McCaffrey, stripped for swimming, passed him close upon the other side of the glass. Tom stood a moment on the edge of the pool, tense, erect, enjoying the cold beneath his feet, the chill touch of the air, the tiny feathery caresses of the snowflakes upon his warm skin. Then lifting his head and tossing back his hair, he breathed in luxuriously air and snow, flexed his body, dived into the plump rounded cloud-cover of the steam and disappeared. Father Bernard, who had been holding his breath, let out a sigh.
Dans l'onde toi devenue ta jubilation nue.

The priest, who had had his swim, was feeling exceptionally full of spiritual well-being. After mass that morning he had composed a suitably pompous letter to John Robert to the effect that he had examined Miss Meynell's capacities and found her, though immature, proficient in modern languages. He especially commended her careful attention to grammar. After that he had put on his longest tape of Scott Joplin and sat down opposite his long-eared Gandhara Buddha, whose austere calm stern visage, with pursed lips and down-cast musing eyes (the creature was
thinking)
seemed to him so much more spiritual than the tormented face of the crucified one. He sat in an upright chair, his spine straight, his eyelids drooping, his hands relaxed upon his knees. While his paltry mind chatters on he breathes, aware of air moving, gently pulsating airy movement which becomes slower … and slower … Darkness wherein a joy which has no owner quietly evaporates like a disintegrating rocket. Is he changed? No. Is this enlightenment? No. What is it then? A harmless semi-miraculous private diversion costing strictly nothing.

Now on his way from the window to the tea counter he paused at the table where Brian and Gabriel were sitting.

‘Good morning. Why there's Omega. What a proof of God's love that little animal brings us, how humble we should feel — '

‘Why?' said Brian.

‘What an upspring of spirit in that tiny beast, such good humour, such inexhaustible good temper, what selfless affection burns in those eyes — '

‘Tosh,' said Brian. ‘He's a completely egoistic, self-centred animal.'

‘God is everywhere visible in his creation.'

‘In this tea cup also?'

‘Yes.'

‘Then we don't have to be sentimental about dogs.'

‘Isn't the snow delightful?'

‘Bloody awful.'

‘What did you think of Miss Meynell?' said Gabriel.

‘A childish, simple girl, but — '

‘Simple, you mean mentally deficient?'

‘Of course he doesn't, Brian.'

‘Simplicity is a divine attribute.'

‘Yes, just look at the world.'

‘May I ask if you have had any news from Stella?'

‘No,' said Gabriel, ‘I'm very worried, she hasn't written, she's just vanished. It isn't like her.'

‘Don't worry,' said the priest, ‘the Institute is always filled with nonsensical rumours. People love crimes and disasters.' He moved on to the counter.

‘What are these rumours?' said Gabriel to Brian. ‘I haven't heard anything.'

‘Oh fascinating, I even saw Mrs Osmore talking to Mrs Belton about it.'

‘But
what?
'

‘The latest idea is that George has done away with Stella, the only question being what he's done with the body.'

Another witness of Tom McCaffrey's elegant dive was William Eastcote. William, also stripped, was standing on the edge of the pool. He had been swimming and was now experiencing the familiar feeling of his warmed body cooling. (The water temperature was 28° Centigrade, the air temperature 2° Centigrade.) He thought instinctively, scarcely framing the thought but mixing it up with his sensations: I
would
have enjoyed this warm and cold feeling, the ice-cream-pudding feeling Rose used to call it. I
would
have enjoyed the snow and seeing Tom stand there and dive. Only now I can't. And I am envious of Tom, I am envious because he is young and strong and will live, and I am not, and will not. It seemed so paradoxical and so awful to William that today his own lean brown near-naked body stood up as sturdily as ever and looked as solid and felt as strong, while all the time, as he now knew, it carried inside it the inevitable engine of his own imminent death. He thought, shall I tell Rozanov? The disclosure would be
embarrassing
to them both. John Robert did not like failure; and what greater failure could there ever be than that one?

Something touched William's hand and he looked down to find Adam McCaffrey looking up at him. ‘Hello, Adam.'

‘Hello.'

‘Isn't the snow nice?'

‘Yes, I heard the birds singing in the snow.'

‘Even in the snow they know it's spring.'

‘A wren can sing a hundred and six notes in eight seconds.'

‘Can it really?'

‘Yes. Did you know?'

‘No, but I can imagine.'

‘I was up on the common with Zed. We saw a white horse all by itself.'

‘Perhaps it belongs to the gipsies.'

‘It was rolling on its back. Then when it saw Zed it jumped up. When it saw a dog near it was frightened. It went away then.'

‘A big horse frightened by a little dog!'

‘It was a pony more than a horse. I saw Uncle George coming out of the library, but he didn't see me. Once I saw Uncle George being in two different places at the same time.'