The Philosopher's Pupil (71 page)

But how could he return to his ordinary life, to his work, to the, as they now seemed, insipid childish pleasures of his London student world? He had been bewitched. For a short time he had lived with gods or fairies. He had been summoned to a destiny, presented with an ordeal, and he had dully, casually, failed to understand, failed to respond, failed to
see.
Even at the beginning, when it had seemed important, he had been only grossly excited, flattered and amused. He recalled John Robert's huge bulk in that little room and how surprised and alarmed and gratified he had been when at last he understood the strange man's purpose. And he had taken those facile emotions to be something remarkable in his life.

The image of Hattie shimmered before him now, occupying its own space, radiating its own light. He saw her silver-white blond hair cunningly pinned up or descending in amazingly long plaits or as he had seen it at the sea spread out like silk over the back of her dress. He saw her pale white-mottled eyes, gazing sarcastically or else gentle and truthful. He saw her long legs and her stockings with darker-coloured tops. He thought, how can I have lost her, how did it happen? I behaved like an oaf, like a
cad,
like a
bloody fool.
At the same time he could clearly remember, though he could not feel or inhabit, the fact that he had actually
considered
Hattie,
looked her over
and
rejected
her! Dully and casually he had turned away, failing to
see
that the being confronting him was a princess.

But she's a false princess, he thought. I am in a state of temporary insanity, I must be. They are demons, both of them, wonderful and beautiful and not quite real. Rozanov is a magician who took me to his palace and showed me a maiden. But she was something that he had made, invented out of magic stuff, so as to ensnare me. And they have gone away and I am still ensnared, they've
gone
and I
suffer.
Oh how much I want to see her now, he thought, how much I want to tell her how it all came about. Yet how did it, what did I do wrong and when did I do wrong? How happy I could be if I could only see her and explain that I wasn't so stupid and so oafish, or wasn't any more, and that I was sorry and … But that's impossible, I never will see her again. She has been removed into the invisible world, and because of her I shall be sick forever after.

‘Oh Tom, I forgot, I've brought Judy Osmore's dress. Look what I've done. It's not perfect, but it's not bad.' Gabriel brought out the dress and displayed it.

They had removed themselves to Belmont and were sitting in the drawing-room having drinks. Adam, who had decided to run back to Como to fetch Zed, had not yet returned.

Gabriel had done a wonderful job on the dress. The tears on the shoulders which had looked so awful to Emma were only split seams and were easily mended. The wine stain on the front was indelible. But clever Gabriel had managed to blend it in to the irregular blotchy pattern of the material by discreetly dyeing surrounding, and other, areas with different strengths of tea. The dress certainly looked a bit different, but the stain could now be accepted as part of the pattern. It might even be said to look nicer, Gabriel thought. She had taken a lot of trouble with the dress and was pleased with herself, happy to have been of service to Tom, and expectant of praise.

Tom however accepted this masterpiece with a vague ‘Oh yes - thanks — ' He crumpled up the carefully ironed dress into a clumsy ball and stuffed it into the bag which Gabriel had provided.

Gabriel retired to the window and looked out, concealing sudden tears. She knew her ‘weepy' tendency annoyed Alex. She was upset in any case because Adam's birthday (last Saturday) had been spoilt because Brian refused to take her and Adam out to lunch at the Running Dog, an unprecedented treat which Adam had asked for. Brian had said that it was ridiculous to spend money on going to snobbish restaurants to have rotten food thrown at one by sneering waiters. Brian had also vetoed Adam's request for a ‘malachite egg'. ‘What on earth put that idea into his head? At his age I hadn't even heard of malachite. I'm not going to encourage him in expensive useless tastes!' But Gabriel had secretly bought a (small) malachite egg, and was now in an impossible position, as she dared not confess this extravagance to Brian, and realized it would be immoral to ask Adam to keep it a secret. The guilty egg, in a cardboard box, meanwhile reposed at the back of the wardrobe.

‘What is that thing up in the ginkgo tree?' Alex had moved to the window.

Brian followed her. ‘Some sort of plant.'

‘Plant?'

‘I mean like mistletoe.'

‘That's not mistletoe.'

‘I said
like
mistletoe.'

Looking over their shoulders, Tom saw Emma's (or rather Judy's) blond wig hanging conspicuous and odd among the branches.

‘It doesn't look like a plant. It's more like a cardboard box or an old sack. Would one of you boys climb up to see?'

‘Bags I not. I'm too old. Tom will.'

‘I'll get it down,' said Tom.

‘But if it
is
a plant, leave it.'

Tom had lost all sense of time. It already seemed a week since his fight with Emma and Pearl's news that ‘those two' had departed. Tom wanted to feel now that Hattie and John Robert had been gone a long time. He wanted mountains of time, mountains of experience, to divide him from those dreadful events. Tom was in process of revising his past so as to explain his suffering. So much misery
must
imply either a dreadful loss or a dreadful crime or both. But that was, was it not, long ago. He stood, clutching the bag with Judy's dress, and gazing from the window at the green roof of the Slipper House. He thought, they've gone. I needn't hide. But already the hiding was unintelligible and long past.

Adam slipped into the room carrying Zed (who had difficulty with the stairs). He set the little dog down, and Zed ran and hopped across the carpet, wrinkling up his nose in what Adam called his
social
smile and greeting everyone in turn with lowered head and white tail-wagging rump. Tom squatted and caressed the dog. Zed rolled over in ecstasy. Tom thought, how innocent I
once
was, and could have been made so happy simply by this.

Alex was thinking about Bill the Lizard and how much, she felt now, she had loved him and relied on his presence, and how stupidly little she had seen of him. He was to be always
there,
making life more significant and secure, in a way which did not need to be continually checked. Alex had a strange terrible black feeling which she understood as the realization that nothing of equal significance now separated her from her own death. There was no more stuff of life, no more ardently desired events, no more wise and beloved older persons between her and the grave. Her love for her family, always a diminishing consolation, was invaded by pain, as by the scalding water which people imagined was going to flow through all the pipes of the Institute. And this morning she had received a horrible and menacing letter from the Town Hall, it said, ‘Dear Mrs McCaffrey. We are sorry to hear that you have been seriously annoyed by a vicious and savage fox. It has come to our notice that there is a fox's earth in your garden, and our pest control officer will attend at your convenience to deal with the matter. There will be no loss of amenity. The exits of the earth will be stopped and poison gas introduced. You will appreciate that, in view of the possibility of rabies, we have a responsibility to act promptly in such cases, and we look forward to receiving your notification of a suitable date.' Alex had written in reply that there must be some error, she had not seen any foxes, savage or otherwise, and there was no fox's earth in her garden. She felt frightened and hunted, as if it were she herself who was to be locked in and gassed. She felt angry too. How had they found out? Ruby must have spread the story around. Alex had wanted to cry out angrily to Ruby, but had found herself strangely and ominously unable to. She had stared at Ruby. Ruby had stared back. And then something else had happened which was senseless and ill-omened and weird. Alex began telling it to Brian.

Tom, sitting on the carpet with Zed and Adam, playing listlessly with the dog, half attended to Alex's chatter.

Alex was saying, ‘I really don't know what's happening to the town these days, and with the Teaser shooting up like that, it almost makes one believe that we all have to go crazy at intervals around here, it's probably something to do with the Druids and the Romans and those old pagan gods or something. I always felt those two girls in the Slipper House were part of it somehow, all the trouble they caused last Saturday. There was something unsavoury about those two. Thank God they've gone.'

‘Have they?' said Brian. ‘When?'

‘At least I hope so. This morning early I found that the keys had been put through the letter box in an envelope. No covering letter, no “thank you”, just the keys. I went over of course to see if the place was all right, and they'd cleared all their stuff up and packed it into a trunk and suitcases labelled “to be called for”. The house looked in order except for some sort of brown mess on the parquet in the hall. So I thought I'd seen the last of them, but no, about an hour later I heard someone come running down the side passage to the garage. I looked out of the window and lo and behold it was little Missie.'

Tom, who had been listening more attentively, gasped and turned, his face flushing violently.

‘There she was with her hair all undone running across the grass like a mad thing. And it annoyed me that she came in from the front, they weren't supposed to come in our way, but by the back gate. I thought I'd go down and tell her off and find out why they'd left so suddenly, I think they might have told me just out of courtesy, and you know they never thanked me or invited me round for as much as a cup of tea, the maid is a coarse type of course but the girl is supposed to be grown-up, they say she's a bit retarded and I suppose that's it, anyway I went out and there she was ringing the bell and pulling the door and calling out at the top of her voice. Then she began to run round the house looking in the windows and trying to open them and shouting, like some sort of little wild animal. She ran right round the house and then she saw me and I said, “Can I help you!” and she said, “Where's Pearl?” just like that. That's the maid, and I said, “She's gone, she returned the keys and all your things are packed up,” and I was going to ask her when the stuff would be cleared out and then I saw that she was completely distraught, she'd been crying and was starting to cry again, and she just stared at me as if she'd gone crazy, and then without a word she ran away down the garden toward the back gate with her hair flying and that's the last I saw of her. What do you make of that?'

‘She's not mentally ill, she's just very shy,' said Gabriel. ‘She seemed perfectly normal when we were at the sea.' Gabriel lit a cigarette, then put it out quickly in an ashtray.

‘I thought she was a bit slow,' said Brian. ‘She never had a word to say for herself all that day.'

‘She's certainly very peculiar,' said Alex.

‘Poor child,' said Gabriel. ‘I blame Professor Rozanov, they say he neglected her terribly, he doesn't like children.'

‘
When
was this?' said Tom. ‘This morning?'

‘Yes.'

Tom, kneeling, sat back on his heels. He began saying out aloud, ‘Wednesday, Thursday, Friday …' If Hattie was still here … what did it mean? When had Pearl said they were gone, on which day did Rozanov take Hattie away, what happened last night? Was Alex simply mistaken, were they dealing with a ghost, what did it all mean? Above all, what ought he to do, was there anything which he should do now, immediately perhaps? Did
this
make no difference or all the difference? Now it seemed there had been some peace in believing it over. Well,
was
it not over, in spite of this awful visitation? How horrible it all was, this thing of her coming back, so senseless, so perfectly nightmarish …

At this moment George came into the room.

Although the drawing-room door was shut, George could well have heard their voices as he came up the stairs. Whether he had or not, he enacted surprise.

‘Why, a family scene, drinks too, may I have one?'

‘Hello, darling,' said Alex, as if she had expected him (which she had not). She did not normally call George ‘darling' in public, or in private, and the endearment rang out as a kind of proclamation or challenge. She said to Tom, ‘Get your brother a drink.'

‘Whisky, Tom dear,' said George, taking the endearment cue from Alex and smiling.

Tom poured out the whisky and handed it to him. He said, ‘Is Rozanov still here?'

George said, ‘No, he is far off, he has departed, he is gone from us, he is no more seen, he is obliterated and blotted out, he has been removed into invisibility without thought or motion, the only thing, the necessary thing, in short he has gone.'

‘He has left Ennistone?'

‘He and the little charmer both. What a little girl that was, what an ivory head, what a milky body, what great mauve eyes and how they could flash! What breasts, what pale thighs, and how she fought and wept and kissed.'

‘
What
are you saying,' said Tom.

‘He's implying that he's had her,' said Brian. ‘Untrue, of course. George lives in a fantasy world. Typical.'

‘Cheers, Alex,' said George.

‘Cheers, darling,' said Alex.

‘Cheers, Gabriel, cheers, sweet Gabriel.' George raised his glass.

‘Cheers — ' said Gabriel, flushing with startled pleasure and smiling and lifting her glass.

It was suddenly evident that Ruby was in the room. She must have followed George in and had sat down, a big brown spectator, on a chair against the wall.