The Apprentices

by Leon Garfield

  As he watched, a great bewilderment and an unaccustomed tenderness filled Turtle. He blinked to clear his eyes, for the scene was becoming no more than a misty sea of colours. . . .

  “What is it?” asked Rosy Starling suddenly. “I felt you jump. You’re trembling, aren’t you? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing . . . nothing at all!”

  “Are you feelin’ ill? Do you want to be sick?”

  “It’s nothing, I tell you!” answered Turtle almost savagely.

  He was lying. He was feeling sick. He had just seen his master, Mr. Delilah!

  The aged charmer of Martlet Alley, neat as a pin and somewhat flushed with wine, had been overcome by the thought of lasses on the loose and had come down to Little Drury Lane to try his shaky hand once more at cropping closer than a nag’s tail.

  Turtle stared at Rosy Starling, whose telltale glory blazed above her blind face like a beacon for the wickedness of the world. His master couldn’t fail to see it; he’d go mad for it! He’d never forgive his apprentice if it didn’t end up on a shelf in Martlet Alley. He’d have to slip away before his master saw them together; if he was quick and quiet about it, she’d never know. . . .

  “He’s goin’!” thought Rosy Starling in a panic. “What have I done? He’s leavin’ me!”

  Turtle sat down again, shaking like a leaf. He was too late; Mr. Delilah had seen the pair of them. He’d winked and shaken hands with himself; he’d pointed to his own sparse head and snipped at it with his fingers. The hapless Turtle nodded.

  He’s stayin’! thought Rosy Starling, her heart beating wildly. He’s not leavin me! Oh, Mrs. Berry, Mrs. Berry! How wrong you was about the world!

  Turtle began to fumble for his scissors. Mr. Delilah, full of purpose, was coming towards him. He was pushing his way through the crowd. He’d got a girl in tow; she wasn’t much of a catch, but then neither was Mr. Delilah in bright sunshine. Nevertheless, Turtle owed his master a duty, and it wasn’t up to him to choose where and when to perform it—however disagreeable it might turn out. But if only she wouldn’t keep watching him!

  “What are you doin’ now?” asked Rosy Starling as Turtle gripped a blade of his scissors almost tightly enough to cut off his fingers.

  “Your hair,” he muttered, making his final choice. In spite of the gaily crowded sunshine, he felt lonely and cold, and wished the ground might swallow him up.

  “What about me hair?”

  If only she could really see him, she’d understand. If only, for a single instant, she’d be granted the gift of sight so that she’d know how he felt, how bitterly he hated the harsh neccessity of making a living. Surely all this must show in his face . . . even as the peddler seemed to have seen more than he himself had guessed. Oh, God! Let her see me!

  “Go on! What about me hair? What colour is it?”

  “Red!” whispered Turtle in anguish.

  Rosy Starling’s hand flew to her lips. She went terribly white, so that, with her milky-marble eyes, she was all stone.

  “No . . . no! It’s gold. It’s really gold!” said Turtle; and then the sweeps’ apprentices came out of dark Maypole Alley, brisking the air with their garlanded brushes and shaking long-handled shovels for pennies.

  Darkness to light! Creatures of the flues and tunnels and the black interstices of every habitation came tumbling out into the sunshine as if a sudden exhalation of a laughing god had blown them out of all the chimneys in the town!

  Some were in rags of satin; some wore crowns of gilt paper; some waved handkerchiefs black as pirates’ flags and bowed to the children of day. Then three fiddles and a tambourine struck up a tune, and the sweeps began to dance!

  Cheers and clapping filled the air, and shrieks and screams echoed and echoed from the confines of the surrounding houses as pretty girls, hoopla’d by infant sweeps with old petticoat hoops, were dragged out to join the dance.

  The crowd rose up on tiptoe, jumping and hopping for a better view, and cast its shadow on the doorstep where the blind girl crouched.

  “Dance!” she muttered to her unseen companion. (Was he still there?) “Go on! Leave me! Find someone else to dance with!”

  “No.”

  He was still there! She reached out to touch his sleeve.

  “Are you—are you feelin’ better now?”

  He put his hand over hers and held it tightly.

  “Come and dance with me!”

  “You’re mad! How can I dance?”

  Although she scowled and shook her head, there was no mistaking the eager trembling of her voice. The rhythmic uproar of the dance was invading her, and she wondered, with exquisite agony, what it would be like to fly in the dark.

  “I’ll hold you! I’ll not leave you for an instant!”

  “I’m frightened. You don’t know what it’s like!”

  How was it possible to tell him of the terrors of her world . . . of the mindless, sightless violence that existed all round her?

  “Trust me, please!”

  “I’ll fall—”

  “You’ll fly!”

  He pulled her to her feet. How strong he was! He must be a regular Samson. . . .

  “Me cages!” she cried out. “Someone will pinch ’em!”

  “Who’d steal from you?” said Turtle wryly. “Come and dance!”

  He led her through the crowd.

  “Look! Look at that!” exclaimed voices. “She’s going to dance! That blind girl’s going to dance! Fancy that!”

  “Ain’t it a bleedin’ wonder!” said Rosy Starling scornfully. “And me with me disability!”

  She tossed her head and leaned, lightly as a feather, on Turtle’s strong left arm.

  He watched, with infinite care, the ground before her feet; he guided her away from the looser cobbles; he wove her in and out of the moving dancers, drawing her away from the wilder ones and taking her gently into the current of the maypole dance.

  She followed as effortlessly as his shadow.

  “Quicker, quicker!” she whispered. “I can go quicker . . . only, only just keep hold of me hand!”

  Turtle obeyed. He danced well, and he knew it. Music of any description excited and exhilarated him, but he had never before felt it so strongly as now when he moved to the ragged banging and scraping of the sweeps’ three fiddles and tambourine.

  “Like King David before the Ark of the Covenant,” muttered the ancient peddler to his boy as they watched from the fringe of the crowd. “By my life and soul!”

  Turtle was indeed dancing with a rare skill and ecstasy as he stared and stared at Rosy Starling, who seemed insensible to his tethering hand and flew like a bird.

  Walls were melting before her and crowding bars were proving no more substantial than bad dreams. The darkness was expanding and stretching till it was an infinite green space through which, she felt, she could dance and fly for ever. There was no loneliness in it, no red of pain nor white of death; all was green as far as the inner eye could see.

  “On me own! On me own! Let me try! Let me spin!”

  Turtle hesitated, then let her go. She swayed a little, then she began to turn. Every part of her expressed amazement and delight. Turtle stepped back, as did other dancers till there was a moving circle of space about her. Everyone felt the strange nature of the blind girl’s escape into space.

  “Got to have it! Just got to have it, my boy!”

  Turtle groaned in dismay as he heard his master’s eager, straining voice in his ear. Mr. Delilah had joined the dance. He’d failed in his own quest, had drowned his grief in more wine, and was now resolved to forestall his apprentice.

  He had his scissors out most dangerously. God knew what injury he might inflict in his drunken passion to crop Rosy Starling closer than a nag’s tail!

  “Come away! Come away, sir!”

  “But—but that hair! Did you ever see a finer mop? Got to have it!”

  “No—no! Leave her!”

  “Sentiment, my boy! ’S’all sentiment! Just
lemme get at her! I’ll show you!”

  “For pity’s sake, sir!”

  “Pity? Pity?” mumbled Mr. Delilah, and then, in the manner of all drunkards, he succumbed to a sudden terrifying vision of life’s sadness and began to cry.

  “Pity . . . pity . . . p-pity . . .” he wept as his apprentice led him, unresisting, away.

  Turtle looked back again and again at the dancing girl with the marvellous reddish gold hair. She was spinning on air, it seemed, and Turtle kept catching glimpses of her strange fixed eyes, which formed an unearthly contrast with the wild animation of her limbs. At each turn he felt they watched him, and his heart stung and ached.

  “This way—this way, sir,” he mumbled, and helped his master out of Little Drury Lane.

  “Where are you? Where are you?”

  Rosy Starling had halted. She was laughing and swaying and feeling the air with her cotton-white hands.

  “Where’s ’oo, miss?”

  “Him. The one I was dancin’ with.”

  “What’s ’is name, miss?”

  “I—I don’t know. Bobby Shafto, it might have been. Bobby Shafto! Bobby Shafto, come back and—and—”

  She faltered as she became aware that the music had stopped and that she was an object of general compassionate interest.

  “What were ’e like, miss?”

  Her questioner was a diminutive sweep’s boy, who, with his long-handled shovel, resembled an imp, late for hell and with no excuse but the sunshine. He stared up at the lost blind girl. Dark to dark. Instinctively he put out his hand and she, feeling the smallness of it, clasped it tightly.

  “His name was Turtle, miss,” said another voice. “Works for Mr. Delilah, the hair merchant in Martlet Alley. The pair of them went off together.”

  “A hair merchant?” inquired Rosy Starling, uncomprehending.

  “You know, miss. They buy hair. They go up and down the country buying lasses’ hair and making it up into wigs for the gentry. They got quite a name. It’s said they could charm the hair from off the Queen of Sheba if they set their mind to it! It’s a marvel yours ain’t gone!”

  “I knew he worked in a shop,” said Rosy quietly. “But he never said more than that.”

  She let go of the small hand she’d been holding and clenched her fist.

  “He did ask about me hair. He just said, ‘Your hair.’ And I asked him, what about it? But he never said. I suppose he was waitin’ till he got me on me own. Of course it was me hair he wanted. I—I knew it all the time!” she said with a sudden burst of defiance. “I weren’t that blind!”

  The walls had grown up about her again; they were pressing in everywhere, imprisoning her till the slightest movement of her head, her hand, her foot was fraught with danger and pain.

  Of course she’d lied about knowing. Really she’d been quite taken in! One had to admit that he’d been clever. Neither her sharpness nor the strength of her remaining senses had been able to warn her. Turtle . . . Turtle . . . “So that’s the name I have to give it!” She meant the image or sensation of an image that had been created in her mind.

  But it turned out that he’d done her a service. He mightn’t know it, but he’d done her a real favour. Now she was armoured against everything, against everything! It was light that was dangerous, not darkness.

  “I thank me lucky stars I couldn’t see his face!” she said harshly, and began to walk away.

  “I thank me lucky stars I can’t see any of your faces!” she shouted. “For all I know or care, you’re all as ugly as toads!”

  She stumbled, and a child laughed. Someone went forward to help her. She shook off the kindly hand.

  “And what do you want? I got no money. Are you after the dress off me back?”

  “He—he wasn’t that ugly, miss. And he was cryin’ as he went.”

  “Any fool can cry,” said Rosy Starling contemptuously. “I can do it meself.”

  She found her doorstep, gathered up her cages, and counted them fiercely before hanging them over her arm. Then she made her way back to Feathers Court. Although she walked slowly and hesitantly, she held her head high, as if to display to all who were interested, her stony, joyless eyes.

  “Sell anything, Rosy?” asked Mrs. Berry out of the black smells of home.

  “No.”

  “It’s a mean world, wastin’ your time like that!”

  Rosy didn’t answer.

  “Where did you get that silver chain?”

  “It was give me.”

  “Who give it to you?”

  “I never saw his face,” said Rosy, with weighty sarcasm.

  “You want to look after it,” said Mrs. Berry in admiration. “It’s a good ’un. He didn’t take advantage, did he?”

  “He never took nothing.”

  “What was he then? A bleedin’ duke?”

  “He was—he was just a ’prentice . . . like me,” said Rosy Starling.

  “Some girls have all the luck!” said Mrs. Berry, and Rosy Starling’s darkness emptied as her mistress went away.

  “He was just a ’prentice,” repeated Rosy Starling, remembering the singing voice and the dance. She touched her necklace and raised it to her lips.

  “I like silver,” she whispered, and then cried out, in aching gratitude, for her day: “Bobby Shafto, Bobby Shafto! Come back—”

  She was gone. Turtle, having left his master in Martlet Alley, had returned to the fair. It was fly blown and tawdry. In spite of all its blaring colours, it was grey, which was sad, dusty, and dead.

  He found the doorstep. Two pairs of lovers were squeezed up on it. He stared down at them bleakly till they asked him if he’d know them again if they should meet elsewhere, and if they did, they’d black his prying eyes and generally render him unrecognizable to his own ma.

  He trudged on through the crowd and knocked over a pie stall, for which he was roundly abused. He bent to pick up the pies and was contemptuously kicked by the small son of the establishment.

  A girl made eyes at him; her hair was as coarse as a goat’s. A friend shouted and waved to him several times, and then was forced to give up under the mortifying reflection that Turtle didn’t wish to know him, or, more acceptably, he’d been struck stone blind.

  In a sense, Turtle was blind, inasmuch as he couldn’t see what he most wanted. A dozen times he’d been on the point of asking if anyone knew the blind bird-cage seller? He realised that she wouldn’t be hard to discover, but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to pursue her into her darkness once she’d chosen to vanish into it.

  He left the fair and walked among the courts and alleys that abounded in that part of the town. As he walked, he sang, regardless of the impudence of street boys,

  “He’ll be mine for ever mair,

  Bonny Bobby Shafto!”

  His mind was filled with a thousand romantic tales of minstrels singing under castle walls to discover a prisoner. He looked up at all the windows, and down into all the gratings that covered the half windows below ground, but they were all blind, blind as stones. From none of them did he receive that feeling of being watched that he’d felt so strongly in her presence.

  “But she wasn’t watching me!” said Turtle suddenly. “I was watching myself!”

  He shivered as if May had slipped on sudden ice into January, and he knew, in his heart of hearts, that the blind girl was lost to him for ever.

  He went back to Martlet Alley. Mr. Delilah—a tousled, somewhat sheepish Mr. Delilah—was sitting behind the counter of the shop.

  “And who,” said the forlorn charmer, eyeing his bleak-looking apprentice, “has put out the light in them bird-charming eyes?”

  Turtle shook his head and sighed.

  “I don’t think I’m really cut out for the trade, sir.”

  “More charmed than charming, eh?” pursued the master, not altogether displeased to see his apprentice discomfited. Turtle had gone out in the morning like a young lion; he had come back like a shorn lamb.

&nb
sp; “However, all ain’t lost. While you’ve been out, we had a stroke of good fortune.” He began to fumble under the counter. “A remarkable stroke, I might say.”

  He drew out two thick plaits of reddish gold hair. Turtle stared at them in grief and horror. There was no mistaking them. There was no other such hair in all the world.

  “She—she brought them in herself,” said Mr. Delilah hastily, fearing an unmannerly attack from his trembling and white-faced apprentice. “I swear it! I never laid a finger on her! She cut them off with her own hands!”

  “Why—why did she do such a thing?”

  “She said to give it to you.”

  “Did you—did you buy it from her?”

  “She didn’t want anything. She said it wasn’t much to give for what she’d got. She said she knew all the time it was what you really wanted.”

  Sadly Turtle took the fine soft hair and held it between his hands. It was the first time he had touched it, and as he did so, her voice came back to him, offering him the richness of her strange dark world; he seemed to feel once more the mysterious touch of her hand as she’d danced.

  He shook his head. “She didn’t know. She really didn’t. I could see that.”

  He laid Rosy Starling’s hair down on the counter. As he did so, he closed his eyes and Mr. Delilah couldn’t help being affected by the transfiguring nature of the smile that suddenly lit up his apprentice’s face.

  “But it will grow again!” murmured Turtle. “Of course—of course! It will grow again!”

  Mr. Delilah looked on in silence as his apprentice left the shop. He watched him through the window hastening away in the direction of Drury Lane and, doubtless, the remnants of the fair.

  He shrugged his shoulders and winced, as his head was tender. He took up the hair from the counter, stroked it, and then stared back at the window and the darkening alley down which Turtle had sped, full of hope for—

  “Let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair,” he murmured, and felt pleased by the aptness of the text.

  He sighed, put the hair away, and gazed with melancholy interest at his own reflection in a glass showcase. Even though the light was already dim, it still proved unkind. He should really never have gone out in broad daylight.