The Pupil

by Caro Fraser

  ‘Why don’t you switch and become a solicitor instead?’ she had said. ‘It’s much more secure, and you’d always have a regular income. The way things are going, I can’t see you ever getting a pupillage.’

  Anthony had been stung by the notion that he should suddenly abandon his cherished project and slide into the murky half-life, as he saw it, of a City solicitor. How second-rate. She seemed to have no idea of how much it meant to him, how hallowed a place the Temple was and how blessed all those who lived and worked there, even unto the lowliest criminal hack. She understood nothing. But then, for Bridget, law was a means to a financial end, to a decent job, car, house, nanny. It might as well have been computer programming, for all the intellectual pleasure it gave her.

  The nagging had only fixed Anthony more deeply in his ambitions, and also aroused in him a sense of resentment that Bridget should presume so much. True, he had let the relationship develop into a much more serious pattern than he had ever wished or intended, mainly through a mixture of apathy and a genuine desire not to be unkind. Recently, however, he had begun to realise that, unless steps were taken to end it, things would become tiresome and very difficult. Bridget seemed to attach considerable significance to the last four years, as a portent for the future.

  Nonetheless, his elation and happiness that day naturally overcame his misgivings, and so he rang her office. Bridget, of course, was pleased, and when she suggested going out the following evening to celebrate, his prudence deserted him and he agreed. It was only later that it occurred to him that the conversation the next night would have to be carefully engineered, if their mutual pleasure at his brightening prospects were not to develop into a fatal case, on Bridget’s part, of ‘making plans’.

  By the time his mother came home from school, Anthony’s euphoria had flattened out a little. He had rung Michael Gibbon, been told he was in conference, and had left a message to say that he would be there at nine-thirty next Monday. To have spoken to someone, even a secretary, had relieved him. The matter was settled; if they’d written to him by mistake, they would have said so. They hadn’t.

  His mother, when he told her, was delighted but not in the least surprised. She had unwavering faith in her son’s abilities, fully expecting him to achieve anything he wanted.

  ‘That’s wonderful. Is it a good firm?’

  ‘It’s called a set, Mum. A set of chambers.’

  ‘Oh. Is it a good set?’

  ‘Brilliant. The best there is.’ Anthony remembered to show the letter to his mother. She liked the tangible evidence of his successes, and kept all his prizes, diplomas and certificates, piling them up against the day of his absence, so that she could trace and recall him. She read Michael Gibbon’s letter now as though it told her something of the deep, mysterious future.

  ‘This is what you wanted, isn’t it?’

  ‘Isn’t it? God, yes. If this goes well, I mean, if they like me and I do well, then they might take me on as a tenant.’

  Anthony and his mother had discussed this often enough for her to know what such a thing would mean. A chance for success, to turn the academic intangible into a prosperous reality. Money, an escape from the smaller, drearier end of suburbia. As for doing well and being liked, neither she nor Anthony had the remotest doubt that he would do both. But then, neither of them knew anything, as yet, of the existence of Edward Choke.

  When she had fully digested the wondrous news, and stowed away Michael Gibbon’s letter with Anthony’s other trophies, which started with a jigsaw won at the mixed infants sports day and ended, so far, here, Judith turned her attention to the evening meal. She saw the carrier bag of lemons standing by the sink.

  ‘Anthony, what on earth am I meant to do with these?’ she demanded. She was vexed at the prospect of throwing them out, helpless in the face of her upbringing. Waste not, want not.

  ‘Len suggested pancakes.’

  ‘Oh. Len.’ Len’s wit did not amuse her.

  ‘I tell you what. I’ll take half of them round to Dad’s tonight.’ Anthony could never bring himself, in spite of his father’s requests, to call him Chay.

  ‘Oh, I’m glad you reminded me. I’ll just make something for myself. Put the news on, will you?’

  ‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ called Anthony, going through to switch the television on. ‘I’ve told Barry that we’re both supposed to be going round, but he’ll probably back out at the last minute.’

  But Barry, when he returned home with the fruits of his academic labours stuffed in a dilapidated sports bag and a Hawkwind album under his arm, responded to Anthony’s reminder of their father’s invitation with enthusiasm.

  ‘Oh, yeah, that’s right! Good. I want to see this new girlfriend of his. Hope she’s better than the last one.’

  Judith said nothing. Although she absorbed all the information that her sons brought home concerning their father, she never asked any questions. She lent Anthony the car keys, ate a solitary omelette, and after watching the news for the second time that day, went to bed with some marking and lay, pondering the hope, the brilliance, that was to be Anthony’s future.

  It was quite a long way to the Chay Cross Islington squat, and by the time they got there, even Anthony’s high spirits had begun to flag. They had stopped at Unwins to buy a bottle of white wine, which was warming well in Barry’s grasp as they mounted the wide, echoing staircase to Chay’s flat.

  Strictly speaking, the flat was not Chay’s. As a squat, it had originally housed a commune of five people, all dedicated to the arts and vegetarianism. One by one, they had succumbed to Chay’s oppressive influence, and left. Quite how someone who smiled so benevolently and constantly, whose voice was never raised in anger or complaint, and who never imposed his views or his music on others except in moderation – quite how this model of self-effacement had managed to wear down four like-minded individuals was a mystery even to themselves. But there he remained, smiling and alone (except for the ever-present, ever-changing girlfriend), quite unperturbed by the disdain and resentment of his law-abiding, rent-paying neighbours. For his was a noble squat, set in a handsome if decaying terrace, populated largely by people of his own age and background, the only difference being that Chay lived there free.

  Anthony and Barry’s views regarding their father had varied over the years, and it was only in the past seven or so that they had begun to realise that he was somewhat out of the norm for ordinary fathers. Chay was still very much a child of the sixties, the kind of relic that Anthony and Barry recognised from historic television footage of the black-and-white era. Barry rather admired his father’s bohemian lifestyle as one to which he, too, aspired, but which he knew he could never brave. The tree-lined streets of suburbia, which he could denigrate in the cosy comfort of the canteen at the sixth-form college, offered too much of a warm, known haven.

  Anthony viewed him somewhat differently. He had never taken his father very seriously, had never much liked him, and stayed out of his way as much as possible. During his vulnerable years at university he had referred to his father as ‘an artist’, when asked. That was all very well, so far as it went. But only that day, and in the light of the prospects which he imagined were opening up before him, Anthony realised that Chay could become something of a serious social handicap.

  Chay Cross was a thin, spindly man of forty-one, with the eager, faded countenance of the ageing hippy, rootless and feckless. He smiled a lot, a serene, knowing smile. His history was one of hedonistic self-justification. He had inherited and squandered money; borrowed from his family until they were weary; indulged in every lunatic experiment conceivable – physical, spiritual and chemical; embraced several religions, from Christianity through Buddhism to Bahá’í and back again; dabbled with all known drugs, and several less well known, from mescalin to cocaine. He had used, cheated and discarded friends, lovers and family. He had embarked upon various artistic careers with neither the desire nor the ability to succeed, it seemed, in any of them �
� painting, sculpture, weaving, writing, poetry, metalwork. He satisfied his vanity by achieving smatterings of knowledge and endless terms of reference, catchphrases, the breathed names of the successful, their cast-off canvases and clay, their ex-lovers. He was a man of immense superficiality, anxious for the approval of the supposed arbiters of taste and intellectual and artistic fashion, seeking always to tap the vein of the present trend. At the same time, he managed to cultivate an image of eccentric naivety, purporting to disdain material wants and cares. He was, in truth, a complete fabrication of a man, a fact of which Anthony was all too readily aware.

  The first shock that greeted his sons that evening was their father’s newly shaven head. For as long as they could remember, he had worn his hair, which had of late become grey and thinning, to his shoulders, occasionally tying it back with ponytail bands bought at the women’s haircare counter at Boots. But tonight they saw his rather pointed, knobbly skull gleaming unpleasantly through grey, bristly, day-old growth. It gave Chay’s neck a strangely elongated look, and somehow aggravated the irritating quality of his bland smile.

  ‘Oh, very cool, Dad,’ said Barry, giving him a glance and then heading for the kitchen with the wine. He was hunting out Chay’s new woman. Anthony was too startled to say anything. He was aware from his grandmother that he was supposed to look like his father, and had spent anxious, furtive half-hours at his grandmother’s house, scrutinising old photographs of his father to see if it were true, and if there was any frightful possibility that he might, in middle age, look the way Chay did. The shaven head expanded the possibility alarmingly.

  He followed his father into the long attic room that served as living room, dining room and bedroom, and tried to pay attention while his father showed him some of his recent efforts in his new field of creative endeavour, drawing cartoons. To Anthony, there was something faintly repellent in Chay’s enthusiasm for his own work and its display to others; perhaps his own innate habit of self-deprecation was to blame. Still, he had to acknowledge that his father never admitted artistic defeat.

  ‘Have you sold any?’ he asked, ever seeking some evidence that someone might find something of substance in his father.

  ‘One or two. Not to mainstream publications, of course. This stuff’s far too way out for them.’ His father continued to use the antiquated slang of the sixties; in some ways it was rather endearing, but it never failed to offend the delicate, modish sensibilities of Barry.

  ‘Who’s that meant to be?’ asked Barry, reappearing from the kitchen.

  ‘Denis Healey.’

  ‘Looks more like Sue Lawley. Here, cop a glass of this, Dad.’ He handed his father a tumbler full of wine. ‘I’ve just been meeting Jocasta,’ he said with a grin, stuffing crisps into his mouth.

  A young woman came through from the kitchen and smiled at them.

  ‘Hi,’ she said nervously, and held out her hand. Anthony shook it and introduced himself. She could have been no older than himself, he thought, rather lovely in an inane way, with long, straight, black hair and bright, anxious blue eyes. They get younger and younger, thought Anthony. Anyone Chay’s own age would laugh their head off, he supposed. Jocasta. Yes, well, that figured.

  ‘I hope you’ll like what I’m cooking for supper,’ she said, and then proceeded to describe something which Anthony could not visualise, consisting of ingredients of which he had largely never heard.

  ‘What’s that? Soul food?’ said Barry.

  ‘We’re vegans now,’ said Chay, by way of explanation.

  ‘Well, we’re not,’ said Barry, following Jocasta into the kitchen.

  Over dinner, which Anthony suspected was mainly aubergines, cabbage and pine kernels, with ginger in it somewhere (although he could not specifically visually identify any of those things, except the pine kernels), Chay expanded on his veganism. Jocasta beamed at him worshipfully from behind the casserole.

  ‘It’s part of a whole purification system. For your body to operate your brain, it needs good, pure fuel. Red meat just makes you sluggish and excitable.’

  ‘How can you be sluggish and excitable at the same time?’ asked Anthony.

  ‘That’s what I mean,’ said Chay, running a leathery hand over his bristles. ‘A mass of contradictions. A body that’s incapable of functioning properly with gross and unnatural food intake. Hence the head is full of hate, the heart full of poison. For humans to use animal products is unnatural.’

  ‘Even leather for shoes and belts,’ put in Jocasta, glancing at Chay for approval. He nodded.

  ‘That’s right. Jocasta has made us both moccasins from hessian and velvet, so that animal products don’t come into contact with our flesh.’ He stuck out a bony foot from under the table; from the end of it dangled something that looked like an ill-fitting velveteen boot.

  ‘That won’t take you far on a nasty night,’ observed Barry, abstractedly trying to mash the remains of his food into as small a lump as possible. Jocasta was staring at his plate.

  Anthony changed the subject by telling his father about his new pupillage. Chay looked laid-back and amused. His contempt for the world of commerce, and for lawyers, bankers and stockbrokers, was well known.

  ‘A web of corruption, greed and deceit. Still, if that’s what you want, I wish you well of it.’

  Anthony would have liked to point out to his father that he, Chay, had never seriously contemplated any real form of work in his life, simply squandering other people’s money to stay alive, but he didn’t. He knew too well the pointlessness of such an exercise.

  ‘What about you, Barry?’ said Chay, turning to his younger son. ‘You going to become one of Thatcher’s children?’

  ‘No,’ said Barry, pouring more wine into everyone’s glass, ‘I’m hoping for a sixties revival, so that I can fart about in a pair of flared jeans with some joss sticks, doing nothing.’ Anthony laughed. Chay got up to fetch his tobacco tin.

  ‘What about you, Dad?’ asked Barry. ‘What’s the latest craze? What’s next in the line-up of loony doings?’

  ‘Well, since you ask,’ replied Chay tolerantly, lighting an after-dinner joint, ‘I’m undertaking fire-walking. At the moment, I’m involved in mental and physical preparation for the experience.’

  ‘How d’you prepare yourself – drop lighted matches down your socks?’

  Chay ignored him, taking a deep drag on the joint and passing it to Jocasta, who took it reverently. ‘It’s a process of cleansing the mind and body,’ he continued, ‘hence the veganism.’ Hence the drugs, thought Anthony. ‘Over a period of weeks one elevates the spirit to a condition where pain can be transcended. Then one is ready.’ Jocasta’s eyes glowed as she listened to him, a sweet, holy smile on her lips. ‘All physical sensation can be sublimated if the spirit is in harmony with the elements that surround us. Earth, fire, water.’

  ‘Are you going to try it?’ Anthony asked Jocasta, shaking his head as she offered him the joint. She looked worried and rather shocked at the question.

  ‘No. I don’t think so, anyhow.’ She looked over at Chay.

  ‘Why not? Don’t you believe you can transcend pain?’ asked Barry. ‘No thanks,’ he added, refusing the joint.

  ‘Jocasta’s very young,’ said Chay, with a condescending smile. ‘She hasn’t undergone the years of intellectual discipline and physical tempering required to undertake such a test of the spirit, and of one’s faith.’ He took the joint from Jocasta and inhaled; the tobacco glowed redly. The gesture suddenly swept Anthony with irritation. They bored him; their drugs bored him; his father’s posing bored him. None of this was real – their food, their attitudes, their absurd posturing.

  ‘I’ve got to be going,’ he said, and got up. Barry joined him. They thanked Jocasta for the meal and Chay promised Barry he would let him know when the fire-walking was to take place.

  Out in the street, Barry counted his change. ‘Good. Enough for a quick pint and a McDonald’s. She was a bit of all right, wasn’t she?’ They wa
lked on for a bit. ‘Can you imagine him in bed with her?’

  ‘Don’t,’ pleaded Anthony. He thought of Chay’s shaven skull, and wished Barry hadn’t said that.

  CHAPTER THREE

  On Monday the 14th of September, a day shimmering with the promise of an Indian summer, Anthony set off in his Marks & Spencer suit to join the world of commerce and litigation. He left plenty of time for his journey and arrived early, then spent half an hour or so idling around the Temple, watching the barristers arriving at their chambers, envying them their sure place in the world.

  When he eventually mounted the few steps to the entrance to 5 Caper Court, scanning with brief reverence the illustrious names listed on the hand-painted board, sharp with envy at the name of the youngest tenant at the bottom, his mouth was dry and his heart was in his throat. He had no idea why he was so nervous. He entered through a door marked CLERKS’ ROOM – ENQUIRIES and found himself standing at a low wooden counter, behind which buzzed an array of computers and telex machines. A burly man in shirtsleeves approached him.

  ‘Can I help you, sir?’

  ‘My name’s Anthony Cross. I’m Mr Gibbon’s new pupil.’

  ‘Oh, Mr Cross. Yes, sir. We are expecting you today. It’s rather unfortunate, though, because it seems that Mr Gibbon’s gone up to an arbitration in the City. Won’t be back till this evening, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh.’ Anthony’s heart sank. He was uncertain what to do next. Should he go home? Walk around the Temple? Sit in the library until evening? The clerk waited the requisite thirty seconds or so while Anthony’s discomfiture registered, and then smiled the bland, supercilious smile of the gifted barrister’s clerk.