The Apprentices

by Leon Garfield

  “What’s that?” asked Miss Linnet, leaning out of the window as far as she dared.

  “Nothing,” said Hobby gloomily. “A secret.”

  Miss Linnet pursed her bright lips and vanished from the window.

  Larkins put his hands on his hips and smirked.

  “I saw her first,” said Hobby.

  “Want a fight?” inquired Larkins, urging his superior height.

  Miss Linnet came out of the pie shop and danced lightly towards the pedestal. The two apprentices converged upon her, as if drawn by wires. Hobby, who’d been carrying his bird, laid it down tenderly and offered Miss Linnet assistance to her perch. She ignored him.

  “His pa makes coffins,” said Larkins confidentially. “Creepy trade.”

  “His pa sells cheese,” said Hobby. “Crawly, smelly trade.”

  “My pa made me,” said the pie maker’s daughter dreamily. “And everyone says I’m a dish fit for a king!”

  “If them lips wasn’t your own, miss,” said Larkins, kneeling impulsively at Miss Linnet’s feet, “I’d swear you’d nicked a pair of rubies from the king’s own crown!”

  Miss Linnet nodded thoughtfully and looked at Hobby.

  “What’s your secret?”

  Hobby’s hopes rose. He beamed up at the girl on the pedestal, then bent down to pick up his marvellous bird. NO!

  Larkins had trodden on it. He stared down at the ruin in stark disbelief. It was Miss Siskin all over again. No! It was a million times worse! Tears of rage blinded him. He punched Larkins in the stomach—which he knew was his weak spot. Larkins kicked him on the ankle. Miss Linnet, on her pedestal, looked down with interest and wondered what was going to happen next.

  “I’ll kill you!” said Hobby.

  “You and who else?” demanded Larkins.

  Hobby thought for a moment. His rage was so enormous that he felt like picking up the world by a handful of forest and smashing it down on Larkins’ head.

  Silently he limped back into Falconer’s Figurines, holding his lump of shapeless clay. It no longer sang of sunshine and shadows; it croaked of darkness and death. He laid it on the bench, where Mr. Greylag found it.

  “Better is the ending of a thing than the beginning thereof,” said the religious old man, by way of consolation.

  Hobby, thinking of the ending of Larkins, agreed whole-heartedly, and set about sweeping the workroom floor so violently that he raised clouds of choking dust that forced the old man to retreat into the shop.

  “I’ll kill him!” said Hobby, panting, and sending up whole whirlwinds of plaster till the very workroom itself disappeared in the agitated obscurity. “I’ll kill him!”

  “Them what sows the wind shall reap the whirlwind,” coughed and spluttered Mr. Greylag, reproachfully.

  “I’ll strangle him!” raged Hobby, wielding his broom as if it were a flaying iron and Larkins were under it. “I’ll slit his rotten throat!”

  “You and who else?” echoed Larkins’ contemptuous words. Larkins was bigger and stronger and Hobby’s superior in everything.

  “I’ll poison him! I’ll push him in the river!”

  “You and who else?”

  In vain, Hobby glared into the gloomy whirlwinds of his own raising for some sign of supernatural help. But the devil sends no clerks to take instructions from apprentices driven frantic by love and hate; he simply wouldn’t have had enough to go around.

  “I’ll choke him! I’ll smash him in pieces! I’ll—I’ll—”

  Suddenly Hobby stopped sweeping. Out of the dust had crept, not the devil, but an idea. It was a wicked idea; it was dark, deformed, and diseased. Yet, at the same time, it was haunting and tempting, and it clutched fiercely at the roots of his heart. Already it filled him with such an excitement that he had to bite hard on his lip to prevent himself from blurting it out aloud.

  The tall columns of dust began to subside and settle, and Mr. Greylag came back for his apron.

  “’E maketh the storm a calm,” he croaked, blinking through the clearing air. Then he saw Hobby. The plaster had settled all over him.

  “A whited sepulchre!” chuckled the old journeyman. “Full o’ dead men’s bones! He—he!”

  That night, when all the household doors were shut against Mrs. Falconer’s enemy, the all-pervasive dust, Hobby abandoned himself, heart and soul, to his terrible idea. Remembering his friends in dark places, and the strange success they’d once brought him, he began to make an image of his enemy, just as he’d done before.

  He worked by the light of a single candle, first preparing the clay and then, thumbful by thumbful, creating a shape of Larkins out of the dull grey void.

  He was going to make such an image that when he came to crush it, so help him God or the devil, Larkins would surely sicken and die.

  He worked till long after midnight, when weariness made Larkins’ hateful image fade from his mind’s eye. He could no longer remember the shape of Larkins’ nose or the height of his detestable brow. So he hid his work away and resolved that next morning he would look at his enemy with more than ordinary care.

  At half past six, after a night of troubled dreams, he rose wearily and went out into Naked Boy Court. Miss Linnet watched him from her window and saw that his eyes were dark from lack of sleep.

  On account of me, she thought with satisfaction.

  She heard the pie shop open and saw Larkins come out. Hobby stared at him and began to walk towards the middle of the Court. Larkins frowned contemptuously, and did likewise.

  They’re going to fight, thought Miss Linnet with interest. On account of me.

  The two apprentices halted within an arm’s length of each other. Larkins looked Hobby in the eye; Hobby looked Larkins in the nose, the chin, the cheek. Neither of them spoke, so Miss Linnet, growing impatient (for we, none of us, have all morning to waste), dropped her handkerchief. It fluttered to the cobbles like a broken dove.

  Both the apprentices saw it, but fearing a treacherous attack from the other, neither moved. So the pie maker’s daughter, frowning heavily on the two marble youths, came down herself.

  “I’m glad you two didn’t fight,” she said insincerely, and picked up her handkerchief with a deep blush.

  “Oh, miss,” said Larkins, “if them cheeks wasn’t your own, I’d swear you’d nicked ’em from the queen’s rose garden!”

  Carefully Hobby noted the curl of Larkins’ mouth and the lifting of one of his eyebrows.

  And that’s another nail in your coffin, he thought, and wondered if he might not drop a hint to his pa that the Larkins family would shortly be in the market for a boy-sized article in elm. He stalked back into Falconer’s without uttering a single word.

  “He’s off his head,” said Larkins.

  On account of me, thought the pie maker’s daughter proudly.

  All that day Hobby was intensely preoccupied, and drew down on himself many rebukes from Mr. Falconer and even Mr. Greylag, who warned him that he might “fly away in a dream and not be found.” Irritably he shook his head. He was trying to keep the details of Larkins’ countenance in his mind so that, when the time came, he might transfer them to the clay.

  He waited till the workroom was wrapped in the full secrecy of the night, and then he set to work again. With a feverish excitement he scraped and pressed and thumbed his creation in search of his enemy. At times he fancied the gloom was full of phantoms watching over him. He could almost believe that their pale hands were helping him, so uncannily did his own fingers turn and probe.

  Already the likeness was quite striking. Hobby paused, and the grey head, shimmering dully in the candlelight, stared mutely back at its creator. Hobby marvelled, but at the same time he saw that there was much more to be done. It was in his mind to make so close a likeness of Larkins that his own ma would have kissed it good night.

  He tried to continue, but once more weariness clouded his memory and he had to give up.

  “Tomorrow,” he muttered, “I’ll have ano
ther look.”

  Next morning he studied Larkins with almost loving care. There was no doubt he’d got Larkins’ features off amazingly well. But equally without doubt, there was something missing. It was Larkins’ soul. He hadn’t got it; and without Larkins’ soul, all his labours would be in vain.

  But souls, he soon discovered, don’t come all of a piece. They come little by little, in the frown beneath the smile and the smile beneath the frown, and even, sometimes, in the strange blind look cast by the back of a head.

  But more mornings than one were needed for study such as this, and looks so deep and penetrating that Larkins himself was abashed and became uneasy in the presence of Hobby.

  Miss Linnet also was troubled by him, as he no longer seemed to have eyes for her. She wondered if he’d found another girl, but could not quite bring herself to believe that.

  Hobby alone seemed tranquil, as, morning by morning, he carried away a little more of Larkins to feed the growing image in the night.

  And there’s another nail in your coffin! he’d say to himself as he walked away, and he’d give a smile as wicked as hell.

  These were autumn days, when the sun in the sky was no more than a golden mark left by the ingenious workman who’d made the spring and summer. A chill had begun to strike through the air and Miss Linnet took to coming out in a green worsted shawl and Larkins wore his sleeves rolled down.

  At last it was Michaelmas Eve, when rents were to be paid and accounts to be settled in full. Hobby looked at Larkins as if for the last time, and Miss Linnet, more troubled than ever, went over and over in her mind a dozen possible rivals and wondered which of them could have supplanted her.

  She climbed up on her pedestal and began twirling round, filling the air with her cinnamon fragrance and presenting the two apprentices with glimpses of white silk stockings embroidered with pretty cherry clocks.

  “Tomorrow night,” she said, turning all the while so that her words flew as much to Naked Boy Court as to the apprentices, “there’s to be . . . a goose supper at the Nag’s Head. . . . Lots of my friends . . . are going . . . with their boys.” Round and round she whirled, extending her hands as if to catch the revolving air. “If you like . . . you can take . . . ME!”

  She’d stopped like a fairground toy; she was staring at Hobby, but her hand had picked out Larkins.

  “If I didn’t know this little hand was your own, miss,” cried Larkins, seizing it as if he meant to eat it, “I’d swear you’d nicked it from an angel!”

  Miss Linnet waited for Hobby to betray her rival, but he never seemed to notice that he’d been passed over; he was watching the parting of his enemy’s lips and the delighted widening of his eyes.

  And there’s another nail in your coffin, my friend, he thought. And it’ll be the last!

  That night he put in Larkins’ soul—and heard the nightly phantoms draw in their breath; as well they might, for the apprentice had made his enemy to the very life!

  Or the very death, more like it, thought Hobby, as he walked round his creation, scarcely able to believe in what he had accomplished. He’d found such a likeness in the cold clay that Larkins’ own ma would have wept and kissed it good night.

  Clay Larkins, uncanny in the candlelight, gazed at his maker with parted lips and wonderment in his eyes. Clay Larkins, fashioned out of nights and days, out of love and hate, seemed to whisper, “Why—why did you make me?”

  “To kill you, of course! To smash you into dust!”

  “What a pity,” said clay Larkins. “What a pity!”

  “You should have thought of that before.”

  “So should you.”

  Hobby shrugged his shoulders. He touched the cold head and slowly moved his fingers down till he could feel the brow he’d come to know so well. He stroked the eyes and remembered, smiling, the pain they’d cost him and the joy he’d felt when he’d got them right. Ah, well, it was all over now. Nothing more remained but to destroy it. He raised his clenched fist.

  “Good-bye, Larkins. I’m going to smash you now.”

  “You and who else?” whispered clay Larkins, gazing at his creator with all the wonderment and affection that had gone into his making.

  Hobby looked round as if for some supernatural assistance, but the workroom was a solemn, lonely place. There was no one present but the creator and his work.

  Slowly he lowered his fist and let it fall to his side.

  “Tomorrow, then,” he muttered. “I’ll wait until tomorrow.”

  The truth of the matter was that he’d suddenly felt immensely sad at the thought of destroying what had taken so much labour to make.

  He went to bed with the image on the floor beside him and stared at it, long and hard, through the gloom. He longed to show the masterpiece to Mr. Greylag, to his master . . . but he dared not. They were both too experienced in the making of images not to guess why he had fashioned such a likeness of his enemy in clay.

  Half fondly, half bitterly, he stretched out his hand and touched Larkin’s well-made lips—as if enjoining the clay to secrecy.

  “If you don’t say a word, I’ll let them see you.”

  He shook his head. The very excellence of the work would betray him as surely as if it shouted from the housetops. He would be cursed and sent out from the shop and the trade for ever.

  He groaned aloud as the irony of his situation overwhelmed him. He could neither show his masterpiece nor find it in his heart to destroy it. He had made it too well to do either. He felt that the devil had tricked him. . . .

  He fell asleep and had the most extraordinary dream; that is, if it was a dream, for at no time could he prove to himself that he was actually asleep.

  It began with his thinking that there was someone else in the shop. He sat up in bed and saw that he was not mistaken. There was someone else: another youth, dressed quite simply in black worsted and stained grey satin. He could make him out quite clearly, even though it was dark; this, surely, was evidence on the side of dreaming.

  The youth was sauntering round the cabinets and shelves, examining the plaster sweeps and beggar children as if whiling away a few moments while politely waiting for Hobby’s attention.

  He had a rosy face and a flashing crimson smile; he might have been a lawyer’s apprentice, such as one meets with gossiping with clients at the corner of Cliffords Inn and Fetter Lane. Yet, on closer inspection, his cheeks were not all that smooth; in fact, they were closely wrinkled, like worn morocco leather. He carried a wooden box that was a little too long for pistols and a little too short for swords.

  “How did you get in here?” asked Hobby, wavering between dream and reality and trying to get the intruder to commit himself.

  “Oh, I move in mysterious ways,” said the elderly youth, leaning over the counter and flashing his courteous smile down at Hobby and the clay image by his side.

  “If you don’t go away, I’ll call Mr. Falconer,” said Hobby cunningly.

  “All right,” said the youth easily. “I don’t mind.”

  Hobby, temporarily outwitted, thought again.

  “We’re shut,” he said, determined to treat this dream with all the business of reality and so send it packing. “So whatever you want will have to wait till ordinary working hours.”

  “But it’s not what I want.”

  He put his box down on the counter in the manner of a commercial traveller about to display his samples. It was fairly obvious that the dream was trying to beat Hobby at his own game.

  “We—we don’t buy goods here,” said Hobby, clenching his fists under his blanket and wondering if he’d be a match for the intruder if it should come to blows.

  “You were thinking, just before you dozed off, that you’d been tricked?”

  “How do you know what I was thinking?” asked Hobby quickly. Surely, now he had the dream trapped!

  “As I told you, I move in mysterious ways.”

  A very unconvincing answer, thought Hobby triumphantly.

&n
bsp; “What have you got in your box?” he asked, pressing home his advantage with the skill of a practised inquisitor who darts from one thing to another in order to throw his victim into confusion.

  The youth laughed appreciatively and came round to Hobby’s side of the counter. He knelt down with a loud cracking of joints, which was, after all, evidence on both sides again. The sound was real, but, on the other hand, the youth was much too young to be rheumatic. He gazed admiringly at the image of Larkins.

  “It’s not for sale!” said Hobby quickly.

  “I know that,” said the youth. “But you must admit it’s turned out rather well. You certainly do have the divine spark, don’t you!”

  And much good it’s done me! thought Hobby bitterly, but certainly didn’t say it aloud.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” said the dream, thereby hopelessly betraying itself.

  “I didn’t say it!” pounced Hobby.

  “I wouldn’t say that at all. In my opinion, it’s done you a power of good. My dear boy,” went on the wrinkled youth—most unsuitably, Hobby thought, for he couldn’t have been much older than Hobby himself—“you seem to have quite missed the point. You made this beautiful object for the sole reason of using it to destroy your enemy. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  Hobby, unwilling to commit himself even to a dream, obstinately held his tongue.

  “Exactly,” said the youth, as if Hobby had answered, which he knew he hadn’t. “And that’s what your work will have achieved. You do see that, don’t you! You haven’t been tricked at all.”

  “And how do you make that out?” asked Hobby, intrigued in spite of his elaborate caution.

  The youth fumbled in his waistcoat pocket; then, as if recollecting something, laughed and trotted off into the workroom.

  “Come out of there!” called Hobby. “It’s private!”

  “I know,” said the youth, hurrying back and kneeling once more beside Hobby.

  “Here,” he said, putting something down on the floor. “Do you understand now?”

  Hobby’s eyes widened in horror! The youth had fetched him Mr. Greylag’s sharp, narrow-bladed knife!

  “It’ll be quite easy,” said the aged lad. “You can do it tomorrow night. Larkins will have been drinking too much, and, as we both know, his stomach’s his weak spot. He’ll be no match for you. And, honestly, whether you do it in a dark alley at the back of the Nag’s Head in Covent Garden, or here in the shop”—he patted the clay head—“it amounts to the same thing.