The Pupil

by Caro Fraser

  He heard Anthony ask if he wanted a drink, and turned away from the vision, closing his eyes for a few seconds.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, after a pause, opening his eyes and gazing briefly at the wall of the changing room. Then he turned and smiled his brilliant smile. ‘I’ll buy you dinner afterwards, if you like. Make up for this morning’s lack of excitement.’

  They had a drink first in the bar of Leo’s club. It was a masculine place, heavy and warmly lit, with deep leather armchairs. Anthony nursed his Scotch in its tumbler, feeling the alcohol taking delicious possession of his body, relaxed now after its exertion. Leo was less voluble than before, tired after their game. Anthony glanced at him across the table, feeling a sway of affection as Leo leant back and closed his eyes briefly.

  ‘Why did you become a lawyer?’ he asked Leo. He was genuinely curious. He wanted to know if any further affinities bound him to this man, as though to solve the puzzle of Leo’s attraction. Leo smiled and tucked his chin down. He took a moment before answering.

  ‘Like you, I suppose, I wanted to escape.’ Anthony took a quick gulp of his Scotch; it burnt his throat. He wondered how much Leo knew of his own circumstances. Perhaps Michael had told him. ‘I wanted to escape the petty provinciality of a Welsh village. The Bar’s like another world, see? It’s like nowhere else on earth. Like a great, big, special club. I wanted to belong.’ He took a sip of his drink. ‘You want to belong, don’t you?’

  Anthony laughed, embarrassed. ‘Well, yes. It is somehow special, isn’t it?’

  ‘Exclusive, you mean? Oh, I’ll say. It’s surrounded itself with a mystique so strong that the people who live and work in the Temple actually begin to believe it. Some of them even live on another plane from the rest of humanity. Just look at the faces of some of those men. They’re almost from another century. They’ve passed the whole of their lives in circumstances of such exclusive privilege that they hardly know what goes on out there. They think they do, but they couldn’t begin to understand ordinary lives. That’s only a few, mind you.’ Leo summoned the waiter over and ordered another round of drinks. ‘But I’ll tell you something,’ he went on. ‘You look closely at any barrister – even the simplest hack – and you’ll find there’s something strange going on. It’s as though each one is slightly crippled inside, in some odd way. You can’t help it. That atmosphere makes you that way. Just think of some of the oddballs you see around you in the Temple every day. You take them for granted, don’t you? Just because the very peculiarity of their setting makes them seem somehow normal.’

  Anthony pondered this. There were certainly some weirdos around. That Hungarian chap, with the waxed moustache and the duelling scars, who took snuff and talked nonsense, and managed to eke out a living at the Criminal Bar. Or the lunatic whom Anthony saw regularly in Middle Temple Bar, always smiling, carrying all his briefs around with him in an old leather suitcase, the inside pocket of his jacket stuffed with little cards on which he was playing forty or so chess games at one time with different members of the Bar. They were taken for granted, accepted as everyday features of life in the Temple. He could think of many others, less eccentric than those two, but each with his own idiosyncrasy or slight twist of the mind. They were all accepted in that microcosm of a world.

  ‘Yes,’ he conceded. ‘You’re right, of course. But what does that make you and I?’

  ‘Well,’ laughed Leo, reaching forward for his fresh drink, ‘there are some fairly normal people at the Bar. You might be one of them.’

  ‘I think I’m fairly sane,’ replied Anthony seriously. Then he looked up at Leo. ‘But then, I don’t belong yet.’

  ‘You’re worried about Edward, aren’t you?’

  Anthony’s second drink had removed some of his inhibitions. ‘I suppose I am,’ he said, and started to explain the whole thing to Leo, his fears and his hopes, his confidence in his own abilities and his doubts of the system which would probably allow a lesser man to gain the tenancy. He even touched on the sense of exclusion that he felt from time to time, the sense that he might never belong. Leo nodded.

  ‘Let’s finish this over dinner,’ he said. ‘I’ve booked a table at Le Gavroche.’

  On the way to the restaurant, Anthony carried on talking.

  ‘If I thought I wasn’t good enough,’ he explained, ‘then I wouldn’t mind. I’d have looked somewhere else. But I know I’m good. I know that commercial work suits me. Michael believes it, too.’

  Leo nodded. ‘He does. He thinks you should become our next member of chambers.’

  But what do you think? Anthony wanted to ask. He couldn’t; he would never know. Leo might like him, but Leo might have other ideas entirely about who was best suited for chambers. When they reached the restaurant, Anthony quickly realised that this place was rather more special than the wine bars where Leo had occasionally treated him to supper. Leo watched Anthony’s face as he looked around; the waiter brought the menus, and Anthony glanced at the prices, then looked hastily away. It was amusing to Leo to watch the younger man’s cautious pleasure, his curious appraisal of the other diners, some of them well-known faces. As the meal progressed, he delighted in Anthony’s enthusiasm for the food, and took particular pleasure in ordering a wine that was far more expensive than was necessary. When Anthony said that he had never tasted anything so wonderful in his life, Leo knew, with a pang, that it was true, and that he had meant it. He watched Anthony’s happy face, his dark eyes brilliant from the wine, his mouth moving rapidly, expressively, as he talked. The boy was an utter delight. So untouched, with so much to be shown him. His tastes, Leo reflected, were completely unformed – he was still groping, tentatively, for the mystery that was to become himself. For a moment, he almost envied Anthony the uncertainty of his future.

  They finished their wine.

  ‘No coffee, thank you. Just the bill,’ said Leo to the waiter. ‘I thought you might like to come back to my house for some coffee,’ he said abruptly to Anthony. Anthony, happily dazzled by his evening, simply nodded in reply.

  When the bill came, Anthony said anxiously to Leo, ‘Look, you really shouldn’t have brought me to a place like this. I wish I could split the bill with you, but—’

  Leo raised a hand. ‘What a ridiculous idea. You’re my pupil – for the time being, anyway. The least I can do is show you how to dine expensively. The pleasure was all mine, believe me.’ He flipped through the credit cards in his wallet, then glanced up at Anthony. ‘You’re really hard up, aren’t you?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ murmured Anthony, staring at the tablecloth, and then looking up candidly at Leo. ‘I am, as a matter of fact. I’m living on scholarship money.’

  Leo nodded. ‘I remember doing that. I’ll tell you something – in my day, we had to pay our pupilmasters for the privilege of being unwaged slaves, see? You’re lucky that’s changed, at any rate. No, I remember how difficult it was. You could never afford a decent meal.’

  ‘No,’ said Anthony. He hesitated for a moment. The business of Len and his money was weighing on him, and he felt that he had to tell somebody. Leo seemed enough of a friend to tell. Anthony recounted his story. When he had finished, Leo smiled dismissively.

  ‘Take out a bank loan. Or tell your mother. She won’t be as upset as you think. Mothers never are. You know, you’re lucky to be living at home. When I was studying at the Bar, my dear old ma was still back in the valleys. Which is where she is now, as a matter of fact.’ He smiled and handed his card and the bill to the waiter. Anthony wanted to explain further to him, to make Leo understand the real difficulty of his position, but he knew that to do so would seem insufferably boring – worse, it might sound as though he were asking for Leo’s help. He let the subject go, and they left.

  The drive from the restaurant to Leo’s mews house was short; there was little traffic in the Mayfair streets. Leo turned the car into a deserted cobbled back street, and threw Anthony a bunch of keys as they got out.

  ‘You go on ahead while I
put this in the garage,’ he called. ‘The white door on the left over there.’

  This curiously intimate gesture made Anthony feel even happier, though he did not know why. He fumbled with the key in Leo’s lock, then let himself in. He found a light switch and snapped it on. A stairway was directly ahead of him, and he made his way up into a long, low-ceilinged room. It was largely in darkness, and he was feeling around for a light switch when he heard Leo on the stairs behind him. Leo brushed gently past him and clicked a switch on the far side of the room.

  ‘I’ll make some coffee,’ he said with a quick smile at Anthony, and strode swiftly to the kitchen, pulling off his tie and dropping it on the sofa as he went.

  Anthony looked around. The room was starkly furnished, the sofas of grey leather and the chairs and dining table of black wood and chrome. The room was lit by tall black metallic lamps, which threw light upward in white arcs, so that the light in the lower levels of the room was ghostly and muted. Everything was immaculately tidy; even the few magazines, obscure art publications of which Anthony had never heard, were arranged exactly four-square in the corner of a low table. Some abstract sculptures stood on shelves and side tables, but even their lack of symmetry seemed somehow carefully balanced. Everything formed part of some geometric whole. It was not a room to feel particularly comfortable in, Anthony reflected. Leo’s tie, lying on the sofa where he had flung it, looked almost dangerously haphazard.

  Anthony stepped lightly across the grey carpet and peered through the kitchen doorway at Leo making the coffee. The kitchen, by contrast with the living room, was brilliantly lit by overhead spotlights, their light bouncing off the stark white cupboards, cooker and floor tiles. There were no dirty dishes, no toast crumbs, not a trace of human debris; somehow Leo’s warm, male form, his back to the doorway and Anthony’s gaze, looked like that of an animal interloper in some clinical domain.

  Leo brought the coffee through in a stainless-steel pot, with some little matching cups. From a low cupboard he produced a decanter of brandy and two glasses. The coffee smelt very fragrant. Anthony tried to picture Leo pushing a trolley round a supermarket, choosing the coffee, standing in the checkout queue with the fat mums and bratty kids. Somehow he couldn’t.

  Leo poured the coffee in silence, handed a cup to Anthony and smiled. Anthony noticed that the sugar was the little brown rock-like crystals that you got in certain types of restaurant. He couldn’t imagine that in the supermarket trolley, either. He sipped his coffee and looked across at Leo, who seemed in some way uncomfortable. Not the man himself, but something about his appearance – perhaps it was the lack of a tie and the untidy aspect of his unbuttoned shirt. His handsome face looked tired, too; the odd lighting in the room cast gaunt shadows under his cheekbones and eyes. He took some brandy when Leo offered it, although he knew that he had drunk a little too much already, and then, because Leo was still silent, he said, ‘You told me why you became a barrister, but you still haven’t told me why you became a lawyer.’

  Leo smiled; Anthony felt a sense of relief at this, and smiled in response. ‘That’s very true. A fine distinction. Why did I become a lawyer?’ Leo groaned in amusement and rubbed his hands across his face, covering his eyes momentarily, and then looking at Anthony. ‘Because I like to win.’ He leant forward. ‘Because that’s all that law is about. Anybody who tells you anything else – that it’s about justice, or helping the victims of society, or about seeking a higher truth – is wrong. It’s a game; some of us know the rules better than others, and some of us are more likely to win. I like winning. You know, when some young sod gets off on a mugging charge on a technicality, it’s no triumph for justice. The law hasn’t won, right hasn’t won. The lawyer who spotted the technical mistake and got him off – he’s won. Some lawyers use lies like the truth.’ He poured some more coffee. ‘You were disappointed today because we didn’t have our day in court, weren’t you?’ Anthony nodded and sipped his brandy, his eyes held by Leo’s. ‘If you look a little deeper, you’ll see that you were disappointed that we didn’t get the chance to win. We would have won.’ He picked up his glass of brandy and sat back. ‘There’s no question about that. But if we had, the satisfaction wouldn’t have been in the justice of it, but the success of it.’

  ‘Doesn’t justice matter at all? I mean, isn’t it better if you’re on the side of right? Say, if you save an innocent man from conviction? I know that’s not in our line of—’

  ‘Don’t be naive, Anthony. I told you – it’s a game. The law doesn’t really exist, you know. It doesn’t even matter unless people want it to. Look at the average business deal that falls apart and ends up in litigation. You think those people really want a court to tell them who’s right, who’s got justice on their side? No. They’re in a fight, and they don’t care if the arguments on their side are right or wrong – they just want to win. Your average litigant would just as soon slug it out in a field, if he thought he had a better chance of winning that way. But that’s not the way disputes are resolved. The law says who’s the winner. It’s the ultimate way to win – there’s nothing beyond it. The law says who gets the big prizes – money, power, freedom.’ Leo leant forward intently again and picked up a sugar crystal between finger and thumb. ‘I’ve been in cases where I’ve known – in truth, mind you, not in justice, just in truth – that the other side deserved to win. But because the other side had badly prepared counsel, or a fool for a solicitor, and because I happened to see further and used the rules better – we won. Because we were cleverer, and luckier. But not because we were right.’

  ‘Then maybe the other side didn’t deserve to win, after all?’ said Anthony. Leo smiled, narrowed his eyes, and crunched the sugar crystal between his teeth.

  ‘Now you’ve got it. Only the winner deserves to win. That’s why I won’t feel sorry for you if you don’t get this tenancy. Maybe Michael’s right. Maybe you are the fitter man. But if you don’t get it – well, then, maybe you didn’t deserve to.’ He sipped his brandy and looked reflectively at Anthony. Then he sighed. ‘I’m tired. I’m going to change out of these things,’ he said. Then he stood up and left the room.

  Anthony glanced round from where he lay sprawled on the sofa. The far corners of the room were in shadow, and eventually he got up and walked around slowly, examining pictures and artefacts, trying unconsciously to plumb the depths of Leo’s enigmatic being. He stopped in front of a music deck; small, expensive speakers stood on shelves at either corner of the wall. There was a record on the turntable. Playing a game with himself, Anthony pressed the ‘on’ switch and watched the stylus drop onto the revolving record. Some obscure jazz, or the fragmented sounds of one of the modern composers, he expected. Instead, the pastel sound of a Ravel pavane floated into the room, the delicate, single-guitar notes strangely incongruous in the blank hush of this faceless setting. He went back to the leather sofa, took off his jacket, and lay back. He drank some more of his brandy, letting the delicious, sad music wash across his soul. His limbs felt languorous, and when he closed his eyes he was aware of being light-headedly drunk. He smiled to himself. The notes of music hung like crystal in the air.

  When he opened his eyes, Leo stood before him, looking down at him. He was wearing a dressing gown of supple sea-green silk, and looked more relaxed, bright-eyed. Anthony thought he had brushed his hair.

  ‘You looked for a moment like the dead child Ravel had in mind when he wrote this,’ said Leo with a gentle smile. Anthony felt awkward. Leo was trying to give him a hint about going, obviously, by getting ready for bed. God, it must be nearly midnight. He struggled to his feet from the cushioned depths of the sofa.

  ‘I’d better be going,’ he said, picking up his jacket. ‘Thanks—’

  But Leo hushed him, lifting a finger to his lips. He put a hand on Anthony’s arm, the one with which he held his jacket, and ran his hand down to Anthony’s wrist, holding it gently but firmly. He looked into Anthony’s eyes; he saw only surprise, but no fear. The you
ng man’s innocence hung like a shield between them. When Leo kissed him, he did not draw back. The sensation was dry, soft and masculine. Leo looked at him, his handsome face expressionless.

  ‘I love you,’ he said quietly. Something dissolved inside Anthony.

  ‘I love you, too,’ he heard himself say. Then he stopped the hand with which Leo was beginning, gently, to unbutton his shirt, and held it. They stood for a moment, motionless as dancers waiting for the music to begin. Anthony felt the perfection of his friendship slowly crumbling. Everything in his life seemed bound for destruction, he thought. If he had gone half an hour ago, this would not have happened. All would have been as good as before. It was almost more than he could bear to hurt this man, to deal their relationship its death blow.

  ‘I can’t,’ he said at last. ‘I’m sorry.’ He still held Leo’s hand. He was conscious that the music had come to an end. Leo lowered his head, then looked up and smiled, lifted Anthony’s hand like some idle object, and dropped it. His eyes left Anthony’s.

  ‘A pity,’ he said, almost carelessly. ‘We could have been the perfect combination. So much I could have taught you.’ It sounded like a farewell. Anthony felt cold inside. It was as though some thin wall of ice had formed between them. There was, he knew, to be no more intimacy of any nature. He felt he should apologise again, try to redress the balance, do anything to regain the easy pleasure of the past evening. But there was nothing to be done. There was an embarrassed silence.

  ‘I’ll call you a taxi,’ said Leo at last, going to the telephone and stabbing gently at the buttons. While he called it, Anthony stood blankly in the middle of the room, appalled and alone. Leo put down the phone and turned to him.

  ‘About fifteen minutes, they said. It’s always rather busy on a Friday.’ He paused, not meeting Anthony’s eyes. ‘You’ll excuse me, won’t you?’ he murmured, and left the room.