The Philosopher's Pupil (61 page)

‘Don't you? You told somebody - what I told you not to tell — '

‘
No-
'

‘You told somebody.'

‘Well, yes I told one person.'

‘Who?'

‘My friend Scarlett-Taylor, but — '

‘You said - you promised - not to tell anyone — '

‘I'm sorry, I'm very very sorry, if you knew
how
sorry you would be less angry with me - I don't know how it got around - it can't have been him - perhaps they really did make it up — '

‘Do you realize the terrible harm you have done to Harriet and to me, terrible irreparable harm?'

‘Surely not,' said Tom. ‘This is some stupid impertinent rubbish in a local paper, people will laugh at it.'

‘Do you imagine that I like being laughed at? Do you think that I lightly ignore the fact that you have made a fool of me, a laughing stock? That something so very private has been made into a vulgar joke —?'

Rozanov took a step forward and Tom flinched toward the corner of the room - standing in the corner, he leaned back against the wall. He said, ‘I am very sorry, I've said that. What more can I say? It's a piece of nonsense.'

‘My grand-daughter's name dishonoured in public and you call it nonsense?'

‘I don't see that it can harm Hattie in any way.'

‘Do not call her Hattie!'

‘Well, Harriet, Miss Meynell, whatever you like, I dare say it hurts you - your - your self-esteem - but you'll soon recover - and it needn't bother her, it's all temporary — '

John Robert lunged out one hand, picked up a small china dog from the sideboard and smashed it with tremendous force into the grate. The fragments flew about the floor. He said, ‘Have you
read
those two articles?'

In fact Tom had not seen the article in
The Swimmer
at all and had not read the
Gazette
article with close attention. He had read it through with horror and disgust and then torn it up in case he should be tempted to distress himself further by looking at it again. He said, ‘I sort of read that, not carefully - I haven't seen the other one — '

‘Well, read them
now
please. Sit down at the table and read them.
Sit down.
'

Tom sat down on a chair beside the table. He read the
Gazette
article. It took him some time to do so because he found that he could not see, the print was fuzzy and unclear and he had to keep blinking his eyes and reading each sentence twice over. He then read the article in
The Swimmer
which Rozanov had spread out beside him. When he had first read the
Gazette
Tom's eye had passed over the bit about ‘professorial prompting' and he had vaguely understood it but without taking in the accompanying innuendo. His appalled reaction had been to the account of ‘a drunken riot' and he had winced at the connection of his own name with those of Hattie and Rozanov. But even on that he had not reflected fully. He had thought, it's only a piece of blatantly shameless gossip in a local paper, no one will take it in or understand it, they'll simply think it's crazy, and I don't imagine John Robert will even see it. His thoughts had fled at once to Hattie and what on earth he was to say to her after that horrid scene. But now … He read the other article. He put his hands up to his blazing hot face. He said, ‘I hadn't fully taken it in. I see now. But it's all a lot of lies and inventions. It's such awful stuff - can't one do anything, can't we make them say it isn't true —?'

While he was reading, John Robert had sat down opposite him at the table, watching him. ‘No, of course we can't do anything. I hope you see
now
the extent of what your
treachery
has done, to her, and to me, what hurt, what distress, what irrevocable damage you have brought about.'

Tom said feebly, not looking up, ‘I do assure you nothing was given away through me. They must have invented it all. Of course it's horrible - but no one will believe it - and later on it'll all blow away and be forgotten - nobody cares these days about things like that anyway.'

‘You speak with a foul tongue,' said Rozanov. ‘I should have realized that you are like your brother, a filthy-minded self-obsessed cynic and a pitiful idiot. And you appear to be his drinking companion and lieutenant.'

‘I'm not, don't connect me with George. I mean we're not close like that at all.'

‘The details don't matter. It is all sufficiently bad to be fatal. You have made a fool of me, and I don't forgive that.'

Tom looked up with his flaming face and sustained Rozanov's glare. ‘You frighten me and I can't think clearly. I just meant people will forget, and it's not the end of the world.'

‘And to have your brother's name brought into this. And to think that he went into that house. Whether you introduced him there — '

‘I didn't.'

‘Is immaterial. I think you tell lies and I don't want to talk to you any more. You say nobody cares now. No, “nobody cares” about sexual honour and decency and chastity and right conduct. But I care. And I - I chose you - because I thought - you cared. I should have kept clear of your vice-tainted clan.'

Tom felt tears coming into his eyes. He said, ‘I've said some stupid things - I didn't mean it like that. But surely you - I don't understand - you don't think that
Hattie
did anything wrong?'

John Robert stood up and Tom rose quickly and moved to the fireplace ready to dart for the door. John Robert said, ‘You are a foul-minded fool. But you need not be afraid of me. I only called you here really for one thing.'

‘What?'

‘You have broken one promise. I shall require of you now, after all the harm you have done us, not to break another. You are not ever again to see my grand-daughter or to communicate with her in any way.'

‘But — '

‘You will not see her again ever. Any approach to her now would be an unforgivable offence, an outrage. I believe you live in London. Go there today and stay there. Do not dare to show your face in Ennistone. If you do I will - I will do everything I can to harm you as you have so unpardonably harmed me. Go away and stay away. I shall soon take Harriet back to America. It was an accursed mistake to bring her here. And the fault, the curse, is yours, son of a profligate father and a runaway mother, corrupted by your evil brother. And to think that I trusted you with - something so precious — '

‘No, no don't send me away, let me stay please, let me try again, I really am as you thought me, I'm not like George — '

‘Go now and right away, at once.'

‘Please, please— '

‘Go away, go
away!
'

The philosopher turned upon Tom a face of anguish, his eyes and brow screwed up, his wet lips opening revealing the red interior of his mouth, as for a great cry of woe. Tom escaped to the door and out of the house.

There's a
head
up there in the ginkgo tree, thought Alex. A head with long golden hair perched high up in the branches. Alex looked at it with her heart beating fast. It was twilight on Wednesday evening. She thought, it's something to do with them, those wicked ill-omened girls. It's some kind of vile filthy
ghost
thing. Adolescent girls attract ghosts.

She walked back toward the house and edged round the corner of the garage beside the dustbins, seeing the top of the Rolls-Royce through the garage window, and feeling another pang of fright and pain. On the evening of the ‘riot' Alex had secured all the doors and gone to bed drunk leaving Ruby locked outside in the garden. Ruby had spent the night in the Rolls. Alex felt disgust at the idea of Ruby's big sweaty body curled up inside the car. She thought, I'll sell it, it's spoilt now.

Earlier Alex had again seen the pretty vixen reclining while four fluffy milk-chocolate brown cubs with light blue eyes and stubby tails played tig on the lawn. This sight now seemed uncanny too, an accidental slit into another world, weird, beautiful, dangerous, coming nearer. The blue-tits at her bedroom window wore demonic masks. And places where she might have run for help, George, Rozanov, were the most haunted of all.

Alex looked past the dustbins along the side of the house toward the road where the lights had not yet come on. If she screwed her eyes up a bit she could see quite clearly in the faintly fuzzy blue light. No one was there. Then a sudden movement nearer to her made her startle and step back. Something had appeared just beyond the farthest of the three dustbins. It was the dog fox, who stood looking at her with his darkly lined sorrowful fierce face. Alex instinctively raised her hand in a dismissive gesture; but the fox did not flinch. Withdrawing his attention from Alex, he began sniffing about at the base of the bin. Then he stood up on his hind legs and thrust his nose and his front paws under the top of the bin. Alex felt frightened and angry at the fox's indifference to her presence. She said, finding it strangely difficult to speak to the fox, ‘Stop that!' She did not shout, but spoke quite softly; and she knocked her fists, feebly and almost inaudibly, upon the lid of the bin nearest to her. The fox descended to all fours, evidently eating something, and then, without even looking at Alex, stood up again to resume his investigation. Alex drew back. Then she moved forward again and, picking up the lid upon which she had tapped, threw it in the direction of the fox where it skidded on the concrete and went bowling past him like a hoop. The fox leapt but did not run away. He ran in fact directly toward Alex, round her, and back again to the garage wall where he proceeded with a violent blow from his front paws to overturn one of the bins completely. He began scrabbling among the rubbish. Alex, suddenly mad, ran to the further bin and knocked the lid off and began pelting the fox with the contents. At the same time she cried out, loudly this time, ‘Oh, stop, stop, go away!' The fox, his black paws deep in the mess, regarded her, and then uttered a sound. It was not exactly a bark, it was a deep resonant shrieking noise. As Alex now rushed towards him he darted across her feet (his fur brushed her dress) and in through the open door of the garage. As with almost superstitious terror she peered in through the doorway, she could dimly see the fox sitting up in the front seat of the Rolls.

‘What is it?' said Ruby, coming round the corner from the house.

‘Nothing.'

‘What's this stuff here?'

‘Nothing.
Leave it
.'

Leaving the garage door open, Alex followed Ruby back into the house. The strange head up in the tree seemed to be glowing in the intense twilight.

George had been sincere in attributing to John Robert a lack of vanity and a lofty indifference to ‘what people say'. His view was however incorrect. Tom had been nearer the mark, and dangerously so, in what he had blurted out about ‘self-esteem'. John Robert was an arrogant independent eccentric, careless of convention and devoid of mean worldly aims. He blundered uncalculatingly through life ready, in pursuit of his own goals and principles, to face men's indifference, incomprehension and dislike. He said what he thought and cared nothing for society. In a totalitarian state he might well have been in prison. He was nevertheless vulnerable to ridicule, and to the mockery of spiteful misunderstanding. Moreover in this case he was helpless. He could not rush forth to confound his lying tormentors. Any such sortie would merely attract more publicity and more malicious laughter. His dignity was a part of his self-respect, and he felt wounded in his strength. He was not only tortured by the articles in the Ennistone papers, he was for a time defeated by them, made confused, almost ashamed. He wanted to ‘hide', and indeed for two days he did not leave the house. He was well aware that his misfortunes must be a prime topic of gleeful conversation in the town. By the Thursday after the ‘riot' the national papers had taken note of the matter, understanding it for some reason as a student protest against some aspect of Rozanov's philosophy. Two reporters actually rang his bell and a photographer took a picture of the front door. A German newspaper (Rozanov was well-known in Germany) printed a light-hearted version of the tale, based on the Ennistone accounts, and a scurrilous German periodical pursued various inferences some entirely new, and published a picture of Hattie which they had somehow procured. (A ‘well wisher' sent this magazine to John Robert together with a letter deploring the publication of such disgraceful stuff.) It was fortunate for the philosopher that, in his unworldliness he failed, for all his anguish, to imagine how inventively malicious the stories were which were circulating in Ennistone. Not that anybody harboured any deep resentment against him. They regarded him rather in an affectionate light as a mascot. But ‘how are the mighty fallen' is always a theme for rejoicing, the McCaffreys were always news, and Hattie, regarded as ‘a little snob', was fair game.

One of the more universal aspects of human wickedness is the willingness of almost everyone to indulge in spiteful gossip. Even the ‘nicest people', such as Miss Dunbury, and Mrs Osmore, and Dominic Wiggins, and May Blackett were in general prepared to smile at nastiness and even sometimes to repeat it. Someone who was never idly gossiped to because of his virtuous austerity was William Eastcote; but in this respect as in others he was exceptional. Ennistone gossip was fairly certain about some matters, deliciously uncertain about others, and in general far from consistent. It was agreed that the old man wanted to ‘get rid of' his grandchild and had offered her ‘like a pet calf' to Tom McCaffrey. Whether this was also a ‘a shot-gun situation' remained unclear, but as people smilingly observed, ‘time would show'. (This scandal spread a lot of happiness around in Ennistone, and on a utilitarian argument could thus be justified.) Some held that Tom had passed Hattie on to George, others that George, out of spite against Tom, had ‘carried her off'. Hattie was agreed to be ‘fearfully stuck up', but had her defenders who regarded her as ‘a helpless victim of scheming men', and her critics who were prepared to go to almost any lengths in regarding her as, according to their own moral tastes, ‘emancipated' or ‘corrupt'. In some versions Diane and even Mrs Belton played prime roles and the Slipper House was represented (on view already traditional in Ennistone) as an abode of sin. The notion that George had made Hattie pregnant and Tom, in the goodness of his heart, was to marry her was a further sophistication of the tale which hardly anyone believed but almost everyone repeated.