The Philosopher's Pupil

  ‘Oh - John Robert — ’

  ‘Mrs McCaffrey - I’m sorry - I brought these bottles — ’

  ‘How very kind! Won’t you come in and drink them now? And please call me Alex.’ Her blue eyes narrowed as she breathed her shock, standing in the shadow of the big man who had leapt up. She could smell the warm cooked smell, not yet banished in the rain, of John Robert’s overcoat. ‘Come in, come in, please.’ She retreated to the door, pushing it open.

  At that moment Ruby appeared from round the corner of the house and stood there, wide herself as a door, and stared at the philosopher.

  John Robert, saying ‘I must go, sorry,’ shot out of the porch and down the path to the road. He thought to himself, I’m drunk! and made his way back to Hare Lane as quickly as he could.

  Alex said to Ruby, ‘Why did you have to come and stand there like that, like a great toad. Where have you been anyway? You’ve got the evil eye. Take these bottles in.’ She went out into the front garden holding on to her secateurs in her pocket. Two warm tears mingled with the cold rain.

  The next day there was a power cut (the electricians’ strike was on again) and the shoplifters joyously made their way to Bowcocks. (It was in the evening but it was Thursday and Bowcocks was open till nine.) Diane, who was inside the shop this time as she had been last time, hurried out for fear someone should accuse her of stealing. After George’s visit her heart was all scratched and scarred and vibrating all over with a mixture of joy and pain and fear.

  Valerie Cossom and Nesta Wiggins, who had been writing a Women’s Lib manifesto, shouted down the stairs for lights, for it was already darkish outside, having been another yellow overcast rainy day. Dominic Wiggins, leaving his work, which he could not now continue, came up to the girls bearing a pair of candles. He adored his daughter, but wished she would marry a nice Catholic boy and have six children. He liked Valerie. He lingered, and after a while they all went downstairs and made tea on a primus stove.

  Father Bernard was with Miss Dunbury. Miss Dunbury had had a heart attack, and had been told by Dr Burdett, Dr Roach’s junior partner (and brother of the St Paul’s Church organist) who believed in being absolutely truthful, that another such attack might possibly carry her right off. Miss Dunbury was afraid. Father Bernard was doing the best he could. He had prayed over her a solemn prayer. ‘O Almighty God, with whom do live the spirits of just men made perfect, after they are delivered from their earthly prisons, we humbly commend the soul of this our sister into thy hands, most humbly beseeching thee that it may be precious in thy sight. Wash it, we pray thee, in the blood of that immaculate Lamb that was slain to take away the sins of the world …’ After this prayer had ended with ardent hopes of life everlasting and a loud ‘Amen’ from Miss Dunbury, the lights went out. At this point Father Bernard made a discovery about his parishioner: Miss Dunbury was almost entirely deaf and relied upon lip-reading, at which she had become extremely adept. Miss Dunbury was ashamed of her deafness and had kept it a secret, but now the revelation was unavoidable. Candles were somewhere, but where? Miss Dunbury produced an electric torch and shone it upon the priest’s face. They could then proceed. Father Bernard had an extraordinary deep touched unnerved unworthy feeling as he moved his illuminated lips to go on lying to the sick woman. Her fears, the solemn words, the glimpse of finality, disturbed him with a sense of his own ending.

  ‘God is there, isn’t He? He is a person, isn’t He? People sometimes say now He isn’t a person.’

  ‘Of course God is a person, we are persons, that is the highest mode of being that we know, how can God be less than a person?’

  ‘But there is eternal life like we pray for? And will I really go on living and see my loved ones?’

  ‘We cannot understand how this can be, but this is what in our faith we firmly believe.’

  ‘But will I go on being me? I wouldn’t want to live on as somebody else, would I?’

  ‘Eternal life would have no meaning for us if the individual does not survive. God would not cheat us with a different kind of survival.’

  ‘I don’t know. He can do anything.’

  ‘Not cheat.’

  ‘And you’re sure I won’t go to hell?’

  ‘I think you can be confident of that, my dear. I doubt if anybody goes to hell.’

  ‘Not even Hitler? I’d like to think he was there.’

  ‘Come now, you must put away such revengeful thoughts!’

  ‘Will you pray for me?’

  ‘Of course.’

  At number 34 The Crescent, William Eastcote, who had been sitting at his desk and looking at his will, was suddenly plunged into a twilit darkness. He had made a careful rational will, leaving a large part of his property to Anthea, and dividing the rest among various good causes: the Meeting House, famine relief, cancer research, Amnesty, St Olaf’s alms houses, the Asian Centre in Burkestown, the community centre in the wasteland, the Boys’ Club, the Salvation Army Hostel, the National Art Collections Fund (this was for Rose who had cared about pictures). Now as he sat motionless in the increasing dark he felt a strong irrational impulse to leave the lot to Anthea. Why? Was this a last confused desire for some kind of survival? (William did not share Miss Dunbury’s hopes.) There was a lot of money, the fine house in the Crescent, some valuable building land beyond the Tweed Mill. William realized now how much his wealth had fattened him, made him feel solid and real. How thin and wraith-like he was beginning to feel now.

  A little earlier, Tom McCaffrey had been making his way through the livid rainy evening in the direction of the Slipper House, holding an umbrella carefully up over his head and a bunch of yellow tulips which he was carrying. He felt singularly ridiculous and quite venomously angry with himself. He had yesterday sent a picture postcard (representing the Botanic Garden) to Miss Harriet Meynell which read as follows:

  I shall be at Belmont tomorrow evening and I wonder if I could drop in for a moment to introduce myself? I believe you know my stepmother, and your grandfather wants us to be acquainted since you are a newcomer to Ennistone. I will telephone later to see if a time shortly before nine would be suitable. With best wishes,

  Tom McCaffrey

  A telephone call in the morning (Pearl answered) had established that that hour would be convenient. Now he was going along, as he put it to himself, to get the thing over with. He had decided against inviting Hattie to Travancore Avenue because of Emma, and also because of the awful possibility that the young lady, once there, would not soon depart. Besides, how could he ‘entertain’ her? It was only natural in a way for him (pretending to visit Belmont) to ‘pass by’ the Slipper House, where, after making a token appearance, he could inform Rozanov that he had tried and given up. The glimpse of Hattie at the Baths which had set Emma laughing had been enough for Tom also. He had seen a bedraggled red-nosed rat-child, a child about whom, with the best will in the world, no romantic fantasy could weave.

  When the lights went out, Tom had entered the garden by the back gate from Forum Way. One moment he could see the street lights revealing the young green branches of trees, the lights of the Slipper House, and beyond the lights of Belmont. The next moment all was dark against the dim rainy twilight of the sky. In the sudden obscurity Tom laid his open umbrella down on the grass and tried to work out the outline of the Slipper House roof. As he peered and blinked, the wind took the umbrella hopping lightly away across the lawn. He dropped the flowers and pursued the umbrella, then could not find the flowers and stepped on them. Suddenly a light flared in the murk ahead. He stood and watched as dim flickering lights appeared in several windows of the house where the girls had not yet closed the shutters. Figures moved carrying candles. He waited a while, watching the pale rectangles of the windows emerging; and as he watched he revived in his heart an old fantasy, that he had been conceived in the Slipper House, when Fiona and Alan lay together on that first night. Then he went forward and knocked.

  Pearl opened the door. She had not put on her ma
idservant rig for Tom. She was dressed in jeans and an old jersey. This evening her part was to look shaggy, sluttish and of uncertain age. She did not regard Tom, bearer of John Robert’s bright idea, as a happy portent. If John Robert wanted to marry Hattie off so soon, what was to become of Pearl? Also, Pearl had imbibed, perhaps from Ruby, on her odd visits to Ennistone, the notion of Tom as a little local star, and she felt a very private kind of annoyance at seeing this special young man being offered to Hattie on a plate. Of course Hattie, who declined to regard the introduction as a serious matter, would not take him. But Pearl had divined, as Hattie had not, John Robert’s weird seriousness: a curious, in respect to Hattie, intensity which Pearl now felt she was not observing for the first time and which troubled her much. She felt alarmed and apprehensive and jealous. And now there were to be handsome young men to whom she would open the door and for whom she would be invisible and old. That was why she dressed, on that evening, invisible and old. In America she had never felt like a servant.

  ‘Let me take your umbrella. Miss Meynell is in the sitting-room.’

  Tom, who had no overcoat, handed over his dripping umbrella. A candle on the window ledge showed half their faces and cast their swaying shadows as Pearl closed the front door.

  Tom went into the sitting-room carrying the tulips. Pearl, outside, said, ‘I’ll bring more light.’ Two candles, one on the mantelpiece and one on the glass-topped bamboo table, made a soft dim dome of illumination in the room.

  Hattie had aggressively refused to put her hair up. She wore it strained back from her face and hanging in a single thick heavy pigtail down her back. She was wearing a scrappy tee shirt and tight jeans which showed how long and skinny her legs were. Her skin looked little-girlish, not youthful. Her collar-bones but not her breasts were prominent under the shirt. She looked almost as childish to Tom as in his first glimpse of her, though less bedraggled.

  ‘I’ve brought you some flowers,’ said Tom. He held them out and Hattie took them. ‘Oh dear, they’re all muddy!’ The yellow tulips were dabbled with mud. ‘I’m afraid I dropped them.’

  Pearl came in with two more candles. ‘Where shall I put these?’

  ‘Oh anywhere. Could you wash the flowers?’ said Hattie. (These were the first words Tom heard her utter.) She gave the tulips to Pearl who had put the candles down on the window seat. ‘Would you like a drink? Is Coke OK?’

  ‘Lovely,’ said Tom, who hated Coke. Tom drew his fingers back through his long, now rather damp, curly hair, combing it. Pearl returned with the drinks and with the scrubbed and now rather battered tulips in a mauve vase.

  ‘How beautiful candlelight is,’ said Tom.

  ‘We said we’d have the fire,’ said Hattie to Pearl, ‘and could you close the shutters?’

  Hattie and Tom watched Pearl light the gas fire, and close the shutters, revealing Ned Larkin’s picture.

  Hattie handed Tom a glass of Coca-Cola, taking one herself, and said, ‘Oh please sit down.’ They sat down on slightly swaying bamboo chairs with fitted cushions.

  ‘Have you any oil-lamps?’ said Tom. ‘They’re useful for these occasions.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Hattie, and then, after a pause, ‘I think you know my grandfather?’

  ‘Yes, I met him once.’

  ‘Once?’

  ‘Well, yes — ’

  ‘I supposed that he knew you quite well.’

  ‘I hadn’t met him before last week, when he asked me to come and see him.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Hattie. ‘What about?’

  ‘About you.’

  ‘About me?’

  ‘Yes, but - he must have told you — ’

  ‘Told me what?’

  ‘His idea.’

  ‘What idea?’

  ‘About us.’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘You and me. Sorry, I’m not putting it very well — ’

  ‘So it was his idea that you should come and see me?’ said Hattie.

  ‘In a way, yes. I mean, yes.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘He wants us to know each other.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, why not!’ said Tom. He was aware of having made a number of blunders already and was acutely conscious of the perfectly horrid falsity of his position, but he was exasperated too by Hattie’s hard aggressive tone, as if it was all his fault. He thought, has she no sense of humour, no sense of fun? Why is she so cross with me? ‘I mean,’ he said, ‘you’re a newcomer here — ’

  ‘And so —?’

  ‘I could show you round and introduce you and - that’s strictly all, I - there’s no need to think — ’

  ‘Oh I don’t!’ said Hattie. She seemed to be stiff with anger.

  ‘I wasn’t suggesting — ’

  ‘Naturally not,’ said Hattie with extreme coldness. ‘We haven’t met anywhere, have we, that I can recall?’

  ‘No, I saw you for about three seconds at the Baths on that awfully cold day when it snowed. Two seconds actually. I can’t say that I — ’

  ‘No indeed. I see. Well, I’m sorry you’ve been put to this trouble.’

  ‘No trouble, I assure you - I do hope — ’

  ‘My maid knows Ennistone well and will be perfectly able to show me round, so there is no need for you to be inconvenienced.’

  ‘But — ’

  ‘Anyway, I am going home soon.’

  ‘Home —?’

  ‘Back to Colorado where I live.’

  The American name entered the conversation with a kind of fierce chopping movement, and Tom felt brought up short as if he had been suddenly confronted by an icy cliff of Rockies. ‘Oh well - in that case — ’ he murmured.

  There was a silence, during which Hattie picked up her glass from the floor and reached out to replace it with a click upon the glass-topped bamboo table. Then she stood up.

  Tom began to say, ‘I’m afraid I — ’ Then he stood up too.

  Pearl, who had of course been listening outside, smartly opened the sitting-room door. Tom (this had now somehow become inevitable) marched out into the hall. He turned and faced the two girls, the thin pale young one, the sturdy brown older one, their faces knit up into expressions of extreme hostile anxiety. He thought, this is absurd, it is all a mistake, I can explain. But he could not explain. He said, ‘I’m awfully sorry - I’m sorry I bothered you - I’m afraid I didn’t manage to say — ’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Hattie.

  Pearl opened the front door.

  Tom went out into the rain and began to blunder his way through the now totally dark garden in the direction of the back gate. The rain, soaking his hair and running down his neck, reminded him that he had left his umbrella behind. He turned back and was approaching the house again when the front door flew open. Something was hurled violently out and scattered on the lawn. It was his ill-fated bunch of tulips. As the door slammed shut he stood still, shocked, for a moment, looking at the candle in the hall window wavering wildly in the sudden draught. Then he turned and ran away down the garden.

  ‘But what is it?’ said Pearl, as Hattie’s tears ran through her fingers.

  ‘Didn’t you hear?’

  ‘Yes, but — ’

  ‘He isn’t an admirer, he’s a liar - and he brought those horrible lying flowers — ’

  ‘It wasn’t the poor flowers’ fault! And why is he a liar?’

  ‘He just came because he was told to.’

  ‘All right then, but he thought you’d understand.’

  ‘Understand what? Something horrible —’

  ‘But you’re complaining because he’s not an admirer.’

  ‘I’m not complaining!’

  ‘You said you didn’t want one!’

  ‘I don’t. I just want to be left alone. And then this horrible spoiling thing happens. Oh why did he have to come? He’s a horrible person. so rude - and it’s all spoilt now - oh Pearlie, Pearlie, I want to go home. I want to go home!’

  Oh dear
, thought Pearl, as she took Hattie in her arms, what a mess, whatever is it all about - and what a handsome boy he is too - well, I suppose that’s part of the trouble. Awful things are just starting. And soon poor Pearl was finding tears of her own to shed.

  ‘Are you going for your usual walk?’ said Gabriel to Brian.

  The notorious McCaffrey summer expedition to the seaside was in full swing. The sun was shining, the east wind was blowing, it was now May. The jaunt had, after discussion, settled down to being for one day only, which was generally agreed to offer the worst of all worlds. Brian usually demonstrated his dislike of this intensive family gathering by turning his back on the famous element and walking inland, thus avoiding any participation in junketings on the beach.

  ‘No,’ said Brian.

  ‘Why? Are you too tired?’

  ‘No. I’m not in the least tired. Why should I be?’

  ‘Will you sit here then? Or would you like to go on the rocks?’

  ‘Why do you want to make it all out into a programme? Just don’t bother me!’

  Gabriel gave a little (maddening to Brian) frown at being hurt, and went on silently unpacking the various ritual objects which always made up the Brian McCaffreys’ home base on the beach.

  Brian asked himself, why don’t I want to go for a walk like I usually do? The answer was terrible. He was afraid that Gabriel might find herself alone with George. She might actually attempt to be alone with George. Am I going mad? Brian wondered. Why did George come anyway? It was shameless of him to come to the seaside just as if he were an ordinary person.

  Of course there were other expeditions to the sea but this was the one which was supposed to assemble all the clan, and which Gabriel had (not felicitously for her husband) compared to Christmas. It continued a tradition of annual family summer gatherings at Maryville and could be seen as a kind of remembrance of, or mourning for, that house which was less than a mile distant from where the clan was now encamped. This was an aspect of it which Brian particularly detested. He had never liked the McCaffrey seaside house, since he so much preferred his own. He had however resented (as they all did) Alex’s disgraceful act of selling it without consultation. Now he felt the whole thing was better forgotten. Gabriel always came back in tears, lamenting for the lost house. And if the visit was supposed to show the usurping Blacketts that the McCaffreys didn’t care it was clearly misconceived. Of course, that particular bit of coastline, as well as being the nearest unspoilt sea to Ennistone, was exceptionally delightful; but it would have showed more spirit to abandon the place altogether. In a more general sense of course the pilgrimage survived because it had somehow become a family custom, animated and maintained by the sentimentality of the women (that is Gabriel, Alex and Ruby) and the expectations of the children (that is Adam and Zed). Alex pretended indifference, but in fact valued the event as an exhibition of her matriarchal power.