The Philosopher's Pupil (76 page)

The steam was becoming thicker, the air hotter and harder to breathe, Tom was panting. He thought, in a minute I'll faint, I must keep my mind alert, I must keep my consciousness. He swung round at a landing, bounded down another few steps, and came violently up against a concrete wall with a door in it. Automatically he tried the door, which was locked, then ran up back to the landing. He could see another stairway, just visible in the steam, below him, but could not see its connection with where he was. He grasped the rail, put one leg over, raised the other leg, began to slip, then, unable to balance or keep a hold on the damp smooth metal, fell rather than jumped on to the lower level where he collapsed on to his knees. He limped down some more treads and jolted abruptly on to a level concrete floor.

Tom looked about him, ran forward, then back. He was on a wide level space where immense silver golden pipes like pillars entered smoothly, sleekly, into the perfectly fitting concrete. The pipes gave out an immense heat and he avoided touching them. He ran about, expecting to find some gallery, something like a bridge or an arch, where he could look down, perhaps climb down, on to the rocks, see water rising and glistening in the gloom below. He went one way as far as a sheer concrete wall, then returned the other way to be confronted by another wall like a cliff. A half-circle of concrete in front of him showed no way onward, no way down, no magic door promising further mysteries, and behind him a row of pipes soared up like a huge organ, with no gap between them into which could be inserted as much as a match-stick. There was nowhere below. He was at the bottom.

It took Tom some time to establish this with certainty. The steam and the heat confused him and he found it difficult to see and understand the space he was in, how large it was and what shape it was. He noticed now with a kind of surprise, as his motions became less rapid, how exceedingly bright the scene was, how brilliantly the lights, which seemed to be concealed, were shining upon the silver-gold organ pipes and upon the glittering web of hanging stairways, now suspended above him. As soon as he was sure that there was no dark archway, no steamy grotto with a scalding fount, and no way out except by the stairway down which he had come, he started to mount the steps; then he came back, stood a minute as if in prayer, and touched the wet concrete floor like a child touching ‘base'. He said aloud, ‘I did my best,' then hurried back to the stairs.

He was, very soon, checked. He went up, passing the place on to which he had jumped or fallen, crossed a landing and found that the stairway ended at another locked door (he tried the handle). When he retreated he realized that the set of stairs on which he now stood did not connect with those which he could see above him, by which he had descended. He had in fact chosen to make his leap at the point where the two systems came closest. To jump down had been easy. To climb back, balancing himself on a slippery rounded banister and clinging with outstretched arms to wet and rather hot vertical rails and steel treads above him, and then hauling himself up - was impossible; and would in any case have been an unattractive enterprise with a drop of twenty-five feet on to the concrete below in case of a slip. Tom stood there panting. He felt he had been inside this weird humming brilliantly lighted shaft for a long time. The damp tropical heat now, as he breathed, came to him in waves of burning hot air, which his seared lungs rejected, and he gasped. Feeling a weak helpless lassitude, he forced himself to breathe slowly. He thought to himself, of course the engineers must wear heat-proof protective clothing and masks when they come down here … He walked slowly back up the stairway to the door and tried it again, and leaned against it and kicked it. It was firm, made of metal, and, like everything else about him, extremely hot to touch. He could now feel the hot stairs beginning to vex his feet. Up till now he had felt like a secret tiptoeing intruder. Now he felt suddenly like a prisoner. He banged on the door and called out several times, ‘Hello, there.' His voice echoed thinly in the clammy steaming air of the whole huge cylinder which was starting to hiss and tremble like a rocket about to go off. He looked downward half-expecting to see that something had changed, but all was as before in the intolerably bright light. Was he imagining it, or was the temperature rising?

He looked up at the nearest part of the level above, a joint in the stairs, a tiny twist or landing balanced in mid-air. It was not directly over him but hanging, at about two feet of distance, about five feet higher than his head. What he needed was an intermediate foothold, but there was none except the knob of the door which was lower than the banister rail of the level place where he stood. Even to get one foot firmly on to the banister seemed scarcely possible. Tom thought, if only I had something with me, anything to stand on; though really there's no point. I could never balance and stand upright on that rail so as to catch hold of the stairs above, and even if I did I couldn't draw myself up, I'd just swing and fall into the gap between. But if I don't get out of here soon I shall suffocate. And I think something's going to explode. He shouted again but his voice seemed soundless. He began automatically to search his pockets and his hand gripped a knife, the strong long two-bladed Swiss knife which Emma had given him for Christmas. He drew it forth and opened the longest blade and looked at the door. It occurred to him that if he could drive the blade into the slit at the top of the door, the protruding handle might not only assist him to rise, with the help of the door knob, up on to the banister and balance there long enough to get a good grip on the vertical rails of the stair above, but might also provide him with an intermediate step on which to climb upward, provided he did not rest his weight on it for too long.

Tom slid the knife into the top of the door. It fitted snugly. leaving three inches of handle sticking out. He put one hand on to the round banister rail. It was wet and hot and terrifyingly slippery, and as he looked at it he could see the drop below. He felt in his pocket and brought out a large and, amid all the dampness, amazingly dry handkerchief. With this he mopped the metal rail. Then quickly, without waiting to inspect the elements of the scene any further, he reached up his right hand and took hold of the knife, lifted his right leg and placed his foot on the door knob, pressed his left hand springily down on the banister and took off, rising to a standing position on the dried portion of the rail, and as he did so stretching his left hand upward to take hold of a tread of the upper stairway, then quickly moving both hands to the vertical bars just above. From here, if he could for a moment rest his right foot on the knife, he would be enabled to rise again so as to insert his left knee between the bars and on to one of the treads of the higher stair.

As he estimated the distance involved and braced his body for it he heard from far above a loud echoing clang which he immediately understood. The bronze doors at the top had been slammed shut. A second later all the lights went out.

Emma turned on the lamps in the room where for some time he and his mother had been sitting by the light of a flickering fire.

It was Saturday evening, the end of a long day. Emma had returned to London that morning from Ennistone by an early train. He had got into the Underground to proceed to King's Cross and so to his digs. But the idea of being alone in his room seemed so appalling, he suddenly decided to go to Heathrow instead and fly to Brussels. His mother's joy at his unexpected arrival cheered him up a little.

The room in which they were sitting had existed for a long time, ever since just after his father's death. It was a Belgian not an English room. Not that his mother had especially willed it so. She had taken over some articles of furniture with the flat, and inherited others from her sister (now dead) who had been married to the Belgian architect. Perhaps too, in deciding to ‘live abroad' she had adopted a kind of old-fashioned bourgeois style suited to that part of Brussels, a modification of old vanished rooms in Belfast which continued to exist only in her imagination. The (extremely handsome) lace curtains on the tall windows were yellow, the velvet curtains which enclosed them were stained and discreetly moth-eaten and had torn linings. The Turkey carpet was worn with tracks of feet. The embroidered shawl on the grand piano, always replaced in the same position, was faded on top where the sunlight reached it. The silver frame of the photo of soft-faced soft-eyed sixteen-year-old Emma, also upon the piano, looked always from the same place at the same angle. Emma's father was present too. A portrait of him upon the wall (painted by a fellow student at Trinity) showed him boyish, twinkling-eyed and jaunty, wearing a green tie. Emma did not like this picture. The photograph in his mother's room showed his father older, sadder, shy and diffident, with soft drooping moustaches and a look of gentle intelligent puzzlement. Both his parents looked ‘dated'. His father looked like a subaltern in the first war. His mother looked like an early star of the silent screen, with her short pale fluffy waved hair, and her little straight nose and small mouth and beautiful eyes. She still did not manage to look middle-aged, but looked fadedly youthful, preferring to sit on the floor or on a low stool or hassock, displaying her excellent silky legs and slim ankles and glossy high-heeled shoes. There was always a wistful not unpleasant sort of tension between Mary
(nee
Gordon) Scarlett-Taylor and her son, she nervously anxious not to annoy him by her love, he irritated, remorseful, aware of his prudent miserly concealment of his great love for her, at which, perhaps, she could only guess. In this way, he knew, he deliberately deprived her of a happiness to which she had, perhaps, a right. Her voice, soft and almost but not quite without an Ulster accent, reminded him that he was Irish. Sometimes they were like young lovers together.

‘I like this room.'

‘I'm glad.'

‘It's so dusty and stuffy and quiet and nowhere in the world.'

‘Shall I open a window?'

‘Of course not.'

‘I wish you were in it oftener.'

‘It's like visiting the past, I like the past. I hate the present.'

‘Tell me about the present.'

‘I read books, I write essays, I stuff my head.'

‘And your heart?'

‘Empty. Hollow. Cracked like a broken drum.'

‘I don't believe it at all. And you sing.'

‘I'm going to stop singing.'

‘How do you mean?'

‘Forever.'

‘You're blathering. I wish you'd bring your friends here.'

‘I have no friends.'

‘Don't be so morose.'

‘Morose. I like morose.'

‘Tom McCaffrey.'

‘You wouldn't like him.'

‘I would.'

‘I wouldn't like that either.'

‘Get away with you!'

‘He's bouncy and self-confident and beautiful, not a bit like me.'

‘No girls?'

‘Yes, a maidservant with a London accent who looks like an old dry wooden carving.'

‘Be serious. I wish you'd marry.'

‘You do not.'

‘I do so! I wish you'd bring your real life here.'

‘It is here. I visit it occasionally. The rest's a fiction.'

‘You work too hard at those books. You ought to sing more. You're happy when you sing.'

‘I hate happiness and hereby forswear it.'

‘Oh darling, you upset me so — '

‘Sorry.'

‘Shall we play the Mozart duet?'

‘I'll do the piano.'

Emma removed the embroidered shawl and a lamp and the photograph of his young undefiled self and opened the piano. He had telephoned the Slipper House from Heathrow, again from Brussels airport, and twice from the flat. No answer.

He drew up the second piano stool and sat down beside his mother. They smiled at each other and then suddenly, holding hands, began to laugh.

Brian McCaffrey rang the bell at George's house in Druidsdale. Stella opened the door. It was late Saturday evening.

‘Stella!'

‘Hello.'

‘Is George there?'

‘No.'

‘Can I come in?'

‘Yes.'

Stella led the way into the dining-room where she had evidently been sitting at the table writing a letter. One lamp was on. There was a book on the table, at which Brian peered.
La Chartreuse de Parme.
The surviving netsuke were also there in a jumbled bunch. George had taken away the one he had stamped on.

The dining-room looked dead, like a pretentious office. It had a naked artificial unused look with its self-conscious ornaments all in (Stella's) good taste: Japanese prints, engraved glass, plates perched on stands. Everything was dusty, including the unoccupied end of the table.

‘You're back.'

‘Yes.'

‘And George?'

‘I don't know.'

‘But is he all right?'

‘So far as I know.'

‘You've seen him?'

‘Yes.'

‘Is he likely to turn up?'

‘He says he's living with Diane Sedleigh and they're going to emigrate to Spain.'

‘But that's splendid! Isn't that good?'

‘I don't know. It may not be true. Whisky? I'll get some.'

Brian looked quickly at the letters on the table, a long one written in a tiny precise hand, one just started written in an italic hand. He had never, he thought, seen Stella's writing. He guessed the long one was from her father.

‘What did you want with George?' said Stella coming back with the whisky and one glass.

‘Won't you drink?'

‘No, thanks.'

‘Gabriel wanted me to come.'

Brian and Gabriel had been talking and arguing ever since the scene with George earlier in the afternoon. Gabriel had been very upset, and then to Brian's surprise very angry, about Brian's suggestion that she had deliberately displayed her breasts to George at the seaside. Brian had withdrawn the suggestion, then, when Gabriel had continued to reproach him, had become angry too. They went over the whole usual fruitless argument about George, in the course of which Gabriel remembered that she had had a nightmare last night in which she had seen George floating somewhere,
drowned.
She then became persuaded that something terrible had happened to him.