The Philosopher's Pupil (50 page)

‘How soon can we go home?' said Scarlett-Taylor, sitting beside Tom on their citadel rock.

‘Don't be silly, you've got to enjoy yourself first.'

‘Swimming in this wind, in that choppy dark-green sea?'

‘It'll make you feel wonderful. Look, there's Maryville. You can just see the top window and the edge of the roof. I suppose you'll say, no wonder Alex sold the place.'

‘No, I think this is all marvellous.'

‘Well then — '

‘I just don't want to swim. But I love this sort of coast. I love the rocks and the seaweed and that black-and-white-striped lighthouse and the gulls crying like that. It reminds me of Donegal. Only,' he added, ‘Donegal is far far more beautiful.' And Emma thought to himself how terribly sad it was that he could not love his native land or return to it with pleasure any more. And he thought how sad it was that he loved Tom, and yet that love could not go out and reach its object. It seemed to vaporize, to dissolve as at some invisible barrier. And he thought about his mother, to whom he had paid a guilty, scrappy two-day visit just before term began. And he thought about his singing teacher, Mr Hanway, and how he had not yet managed to tell him that he had decided to give up singing. And shall I really
never sing again?
he thought.

‘Look at old George sitting there and brooding. Whatever is he thinking, I wonder!'

‘Why has he come?'

‘To act lonely and misunderstood. Look at that pose.'

‘I want to talk to George,' said Emma. ‘I want to have a long talk with him.'

‘You want to help him, everyone does, isn't he lucky!'

‘Don't you want to help him, don't you love him?'

‘Oh, I suppose so, but what can love do if it can't get in, wander round wailing?'

What indeed. ‘How I wish I hadn't missed seeing Stella that day at Brian's place.'

‘Yes, you just missed her. Stella's strong, she's stronger than any of us. And so beautiful - she's like an Egyptian queen.'

‘But where is she?'

‘In London. Or gone back to her father in Tokyo is my guess.'

‘Isn't it odd?'

‘Yes, but George and Stella have always been odd.'

‘Why, there's Miss Meynell and Miss Scotney.'

‘How do you know the maid's name?'

‘I heard it at the Baths.'

‘Good heavens, they're starting to undress, they don't know we're up here and can see them, quick!'

Tom and Emma slithered down the side of the rock and ran away across the beach towards the water.

The drinks before lunch had been as follows: Gabriel had brought a gin and fresh orange juice mixture all cold in thermos flasks. Alex had brought two bottles of whisky and two soda syphons. Pearl had brought Coca-Cola. Yugoslav Riesling had been served with lunch. The food at lunch had been as follows: Gabriel's ‘spread' consisted of pate with oatmeal biscuits, Danish salami, slices of tongue, lettuce salad, tomato salad, watercress, new potatoes, rye bread with caraway seeds, cottage cheese, summer pudding and grapes. While Ruby provided ham sandwiches, egg sandwiches, cucumber sandwiches, sausages, veal-and-ham pie, water biscuits, Cheddar cheese, Double Gloucester cheese, custard tarts and bananas. As Ruby and Gabriel never consulted each other about how much to bring, both made sure of feeding everybody, so there was plenty to eat. Emma achieved his ambition of having a conversation with George. He made a point of sitting near him and questioned him about the Ennistone Ring and the Museum. There was a general embarrassment (enjoyed by George) when Emma (who did not know of George's exploit) expressed regret that the Museum's unique collection of Roman glass, about which he had read, was not on display. Coughing by Brian and a kick from Tom then terminated the brief conversation. However, it had
been
a conversation and there had been a little perhaps absurd surprise at the spectacle of George behaving in a perfectly ordinary way. (Yet how did they expect him to behave?) George displayed no eccentricity except that, while answering Emma's questions, he stared fixedly at Hattie. He had taken off his jacket and waistcoat, displaying a new plumpness. His round face looked pleased and calm, and his stare was benevolent though intense. Hattie, aware of it, averted her head. Before lunch Tom had politely asked Hattie if she did not find the sea cold, and she had politely answered that it was no colder than Maine. At lunch he had endeavoured to sit next to Hattie, but had been prevented, intentionally or not, by Pearl who, in the awkwardness of their sitting down on rocks and rugs, took the vacant place. Alex, looking slim and youthful in trousers and a brilliant blue beach shirt, her bushy peppery-salty hair gleaming in the sun, made herself agreeable to the girls, while being acutely conscious of George. Gabriel, also acutely conscious of George, could not help looking at him with a little smile which expressed, look how
good
he's being. She even turned to Brian, indicating George's splendidly normal behaviour with an approving nod. This annoyed both Brian and Tom.

‘Where have you been?' said Alex to Ruby. ‘I've had to do all the clearing-up myself, everyone's gone away.'

‘I went for a walk.'

‘A
walk
? You don't walk.'

‘I went to look at the house.'

‘Maryville? We don't want them to think we're spying! Please finish all this now. I've done most of it anyway.'

Alex walked away. She was quite suddenly feeling the most intense regret about having sold Maryville. She thought, I could have invited
him
there, a sort of house party, it would have made sense, he would have come. She had been so near to getting him in through the door of Belmont that time when he appeared with the bottles. What did
they
mean? She felt lonely and resentful on the empty beach and the sound of the sea made her think about death. She wanted to find George, but he had gone; everyone had gone. Looking to see the time, she found that her watch was no longer on her wrist; she must have dropped it somewhere. Moaning with vexation, she began to search the sand.

‘Where's George?' said Brian to Tom.

‘I don't know.'

‘Did Gabriel come with you?'

‘No, I haven't seen her.'

Brian had walked along beside the rocks, the lighthouse way, not the Maryville way, with Adam and Zed. He thought Gabriel had set off that way, but she was not to be seen. He hurried back, leaving Adam and Zed on the beach near their camp, ‘Don't swim until I come back,' and then ran all the way to the ruined manor house. There was laughter in the garden, Tom, Hattie, Pearl and Emma, but no Gabriel. Brian thought, she's somewhere with George. Puffing, he began to run back to the beach.

‘I want to sort of apologize,' said Tom to Hattie. They were for a moment alone together in the wild garden, where the box hedges had grown into ragged monsters twelve feet high. Fragments of old paving, of statues and urns and balustrades, lay about half-buried under grass and moss, and great prickly arches of roses run wild. A distant cuckoo chanted. Invisible larks were singing high above in the blinding blue air.

‘Why, there's a hand!' said Hattie. She detached a life-size stone hand from a tangle of brambles.

‘How beautiful, how strange.'

‘Would you like it?'

‘No, it's yours.'

‘Is it marble?'

‘Limestone, I think.'

‘Why sort of?'

‘What?'

‘Why just “sort of” apologize?'

‘Why indeed. I want to apologize.'

‘Go on then.'

‘I don't know how to do it — '

‘Don't then.'

‘I mean - I thought your grandfather had told you — '

‘Told me what?'

‘That he wanted - well, that he wanted us to get married.'

Hattie was silent for a moment looking at the hand. Her hair, fuzzy from immersion in the sea, held at the back of her neck by a ribbon, swarmed down her back. She put the hand in the pocket of her dress (she was wearing her new summer dress from Anne Lapwing's Boutique), but the hand was too heavy and the dress sagged. She took it out again.

‘All right. I regard you as having apologized.'

‘But — '

‘It doesn't matter, it doesn't
matter.
'

‘It sounds crazy, doesn't it — '

‘What does?'

‘What he wanted.'

‘Yes.'

‘I mean - he is a bit eccentric - things don't happen like that, do they — '

‘No.'

‘Will you tell him?'

‘Tell him what?'

‘That I visited you - that I - that I tried — '

‘No. It's nothing to do with me. It's nothing
whatever
to do with me.'

‘Oh - all right — ' said Tom unhappily. ‘I'll write to him.' He had hoped that his ‘apology' would free him from guilt and the feeling, which Tom hated, that someone thought ill of him. But now it all seemed even worse. What a muddle.

‘I've wanted to talk to you for some time,' said Emma. He and Pearl were alone together in another part of the garden where there was an overgrown lily-pond at the bottom of a broken flight of steps. The lilies had covered almost all the surface of the water. Just here and there, in dark-green windows, there was the quick golden flash of a huge orfe.

‘How can that be?' said Pearl. ‘We've only met today.' Pearl was wearing a summer dress too, not a flowy flowery one like Hattie's, but a straight yellow shift, like a sort of science fiction uniform, roped in at the waist to an increased narrowness. Her head too, with her straight profile, looked narrow as if it were trying to be two-dimensional. The sun had made her dark complexion a shade darker, raising a reddish-brown glow in her cheeks, and finding reddish lights in her dark hair, which she had had expertly cut much shorter.

‘I saw you several times at the Baths, at the Institute as they call it.'

‘Oh —?' Pearl found Emma very odd. He was perspiring in his coat and waistcoat, and his pale face was burnt to an uncomfortable shiny pink. He peered at her sternly through his narrow oval glasses.

‘Yes. You interest me.'

‘It's kind of you to be interested! You know I'm Miss Meynell's maid?'

‘Yes, that's picturesque but not important. It's quaint for anybody to be anybody's maid these days.'

‘You're Irish, aren't you?'

‘That too is picturesque but not important.'

‘Well, what is important?'

‘You are.' Emma threw a stone into the pool but it did not sink, it rested upon a thick water-lily leaf. He threw another to hit the first but missed.

‘What can I do for you?' said Pearl, rather curtly.

‘Ah, I don't know that yet,' said Emma. ‘Possibly nothing.' He added, ‘I wanted to meet you before I knew who you were.'

‘But why did you want to meet me? I'm sorry, this is becoming a rather silly conversation.'

‘I don't think so. A little laboured, but we make progress. Again, I don't know. Why is one impressed by some people and not by others? That's not a matter of logic.'

‘I think we should go back — '

‘I don't usually talk to girls like this. I don't usually talk to girls at all.'

‘It may be better not to talk. You'll find me very dull.'

‘Why do you think that?'

‘I know nothing.'

‘That's all right, I know everything. If you want to know anything, I can tell you.'

‘You're a historian —?'

‘Yes. Of course all I know is facts and a few tattered ideas I find adhering to them.'

‘We'd better go and join Miss Meynell and Mr McCaffrey.'

‘My friend is called Tom, your friend is called Hattie. Can't you drop the Misses and Misters?'

‘No.'

‘As you please. I've thought of a reason why I wanted to meet you.'

‘Why?'

‘You look dry.'

‘Dry?'

‘Yes. Girls are seldom dry.'

‘What does it mean?'

‘Dry as in hard and dry. The opposite to soft and mushy.'

‘I thought men liked softness. Perhaps you think I'm like a boy.'

‘Tell me something about yourself.'

‘What?'

‘Anything.'

‘My mother was a prostitute.'

‘Am I supposed to be impressed?'

Meanwhile Gabriel was having a terrible experience. She had set off walking along the beach (as Brian had seen her do) but had soon climbed up on to the rocks on the landward side and begun to clamber along them. Was she looking for George? No. The idea of being alone with George in this intense wild region filled her with fear. Did she enjoy the fear? She went on and came at last to a place she knew, not far from the lighthouse, where the rocks became steep and the strip of sand between the seaward rocks and the landward rocks disappeared, and the rocks fell sheer into deep water. Here, lifting her head from a difficult scramble, she suddenly saw a man ahead of her, outlined against the sky. For a second she thought it was George. Then she saw that in fact it was not a man, but a tall teenage boy. As she advanced, she saw another boy. They were standing looking down into a shallow pool in the rocks where, above the high-tide mark, the winter storms had tossed some flying water. Gabriel knew the pool. As she came forward the boys saw her. ‘Hello.' ‘Hello.' Gabriel paused beside the pool and looked down too. Then she felt an instant spasm of pain and premonitory fear. There was a fish swimming to and fro in the pool, a large fish about eighteen inches long. Gabriel thought, that fish has no business in that pool, he must have been put there by the boys. Her identification with the fish was instantaneous. She thought, he will very soon suffocate if he is left here. The pool is foul anyway, the sea never reaches it at this time of year.

She said, ‘What a lovely fish. Did you catch him?'