The Launching of Roger Brook

by Dennis Wheatley

  ‘That’s yours,’ said Colas, pointing to a bed in the far corner. ‘And, by all the saints, I’m pleased to see you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ replied Roger, giving him a slightly suspicious look at this somewhat curious welcome.

  Colas grinned. ‘You don’t know what you are in for yet. ’Tis you who are the junior apprentice now, and a dog’s life you’ll find it, till some other poor greenhorn is articled and takes your place.’

  ‘But I have not been articled,’ said Roger firmly, ‘so I am not an apprentice.’

  ‘To the devil with that!’ Colas declared truculently. ‘As you are to share our room you’ll count as one. ’Twill be for you in future to get up an hour before the rest of us and fetch up the pails of water for our washing. You’ll have to run errands for us, too; get us our tucker from Julien, the pastrycook, and carry billet-doux from Hutot and Monestot to their mistresses. You’ll empty the slops and make our beds in the midday recess. You won’t have time for that in the mornings since ‘twill be for you now to sweep out the office, clear the wastepaper baskets and fill the inkpots, unless you choose to do that overnight; but I’ve always been too tired by evening after eight hours of that old brute Brochard’s driving.’

  Roger’s mouth hardened. When he had accepted Maître Léger’s offer he had expected to be faced with long hours of dreary and uninteresting work, but not to be sent back to school again; and young Colas had painted a picture of a more exacting life than that led by the most junior fags at Sherborne.

  ‘I’ll do all there is to do in the office, if ’tis required of me,’ he said, ‘but you can all get your water for yourselves and run your own errands.’

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ scoffed Colas. ‘Hutot is as strong as a bull, and as easily angered. Cross him if you like but ‘twill be the worse for you. And don’t think ‘twill do you any good to go tale-bearing to Maître Léger. If you do we’ll make your life hell for you.’

  He paused for a moment, then went on more kindly. ‘Take my advice and do as Hutot tells you without complaining. You’ll soon get used to it, and I will lend you a hand now and then. I’ll give you a good tip, too. Keep on the right side of Brigitte, the cook, and she’ll give you a decent portion at meals.’

  Roger accepted this belated olive branch but reserved his decision as to how far he would make himself a slave to the other apprentices; then, as the day was now well advanced, he said he would go and fetch his belongings from the Du Guesclin.

  He had already settled up there that morning, so he had only to collect his bag, and, on the way, he decided to take a walk through the town in order to think over the new situation in which he found himself.

  Apart from the personal loss he felt over the death of old Aristotle Fénelon he was just beginning to realise how much he would miss the free life of the road, as the constant change of scene and interest had suited his temperament. By comparison the lawyer’s office offered not only a narrow life but one of drudgery. Yet to settle down there for a time at least offered security and seemed his only way of escape from the perils which beset a life of homeless vagabondage.

  There was, too, the question of Athénaïs. Even with his other preoccupations during the day she had never been far from his thoughts and, although Monsieur Aldegonde had said that she would be absent from Rennes for some weeks, she was certain to return there in due course. He felt that, come what might, he could not possibly bring himself to leave Rennes without seeing her again; so the obvious course was to make the best of things for the time being at Maître Léger’s.

  One point about his new position worried him considerably. His master had naturally assumed that he knew German, and, although it seemed unlikely that much German correspondence passed through the office, he did not want to be caught out; not only for his own sake but because of the awkward position in which it would place his benefactor, now that he was presumed to be one of Maître Léger’s relatives by marriage.

  It was clear that he could not hope to master the language in a few weeks without proper tuition, but he felt that with the aid of a German grammar, for such secret study as he could get in during his spare time, he might be able to learn sufficient of it to make out the contents of a letter; so he walked the streets until he found a bookshop on the Quai de Lamennais, where he managed to buy a ‘First Steps in German’ and a French-German dictionary.

  Darkness was now falling, so, quickening his pace, he collected his things at the Du Guesclin and made his way back to the lawyer’s house in the Rue d’Antrain.

  Up in the attic he found his new room-mates tidying themselves up before going down to supper. They immediately all crowded round him with a spate of questions. He did his best to answer civilly but without committing himself too far on the score of his past circumstances.

  The dark, well-dressed Quatrevaux proved his most persistent questioner, but it was the surly-looking Hutot who said:

  ‘So, you’re a relative of Madame Léger’s, are you? Well, don’t imagine that we shall treat you any differently on that account. You are now the junior here and will consider yourself as our servant.’

  ‘Nay, nay,’ Quatrevaux protested in a mocking voice, ‘how crudely you put things, Hutot. Monsieur Breuc is not our servant, but a friend who will be delighted to render us certain services; and, as an earnest of his friendship, he was just about to suggest procuring half a dozen bottles of good wine in which we could drink his health tonight.’

  Roger knew that the custom of paying one’s footing was a common one on entering many walks of life, so he replied at once: ‘I will do so with pleasure, Messieurs, if you will be good enough to tell me where best to buy them.’

  ‘After supper I will take you to a good place round the corner,’ volunteered Quatrevaux. ‘But there is supper, so let us go down.’

  A handbell had begun to clang as he was speaking and, on hearing it, all the others made a dash for the door, leaving Roger and Quatrevaux to bring up the rear.

  ‘Ill-mannered brutes,’ murmured the dark young man. ‘By the way they rush for their food anyone could tell that they come from peasant families; but I saw at the first glance, Monsieur Breuc, that you are a person of some breeding.’

  ’Tis true, Monsieur, and I am happy to be able to return the compliment.’

  ‘I trust we shall be friends, then. In these times persons who have any pretensions to quality should stand together. But I warn you to have a care how you cross Hutot. He is cunning as well as strong and in a position to make your life a misery if you refuse to obey his slightest whim.’

  ‘Thanks for the warning,’ said Roger gratefully. ‘As for your offer of friendship, Monsieur, I am most happy to accept it. If my lot is to be a hard one here ‘twill be a great consolation to have someone to whom I can talk freely.’

  On their reaching the ground floor Quatrevaux led Roger through a short passage at the back of the hall to a one-storeyed wing of the house that jutted out along the side of a small courtyard. It contained Maître Léger’s dining-room and the kitchen quarters.

  Roger had supposed that the apprentices would eat with the master of the house, but Quatrevaux told him that only Brochard enjoyed that privilege, and that of being waited on by Aimée, the little fifteen-year-old maid. The rest of the staff lived out, and to fend for themselves in the kitchen was considered good enough for the apprentices.

  The others were already seated at a big deal table and Brigitte, the ample-bosomed young cook, was ladling stew from a saucepan on to their plates. Roger wished her good-evening and, as soon as she had helped him, set to; but before he was a third of the way through, the others had guzzled their portions and were calling for a second helping. By the time his turn came Hutot had demanded a third and the saucepan was empty, which provoked a general laugh at Roger’s expense. There was only bread and cheese to follow, but ample of that, so he made up on it and did not leave the table hungry.

  When they had finished they all went out into the town
and, leaving their companions, Quatrevaux took Roger to a small tavern nearby: on entering which he at once suggested that they should drink a bottle together on their own.

  ‘’Twill take us half an hour or more to dispose of a bottle,’ Roger hazarded, thinking of his extremely small store of crowns. ‘Will not the others become angry at being kept waiting for so long?’

  ‘Nay, we have ample time,’ Quatrevaux shrugged. ‘’Tis perhaps some excuse for the way they bolt their food that on weekdays after supper is our only time of recreation. All of us have a tryst with some wench most evenings, but must be in by ten, as Brochard locks up at that hour and has a dozen unpleasant ways of taking it out of late-comers. ’Tis on that account we are forced to celebrate by taking bottles up to our room; but you can depend upon it that none of them will be back before St. Pierre’s bells have begun their chiming.’

  ‘In that case what wine will you drink?’ asked Roger, endeavouring to hide his anxiety as to whether his funds would run to this evening’s entertainment.

  To his relief his new friend answered: ‘They have a good Chateau Neuf du Pape here that is not expensive, and for the wine we are to take back the Vin Ordinaire will serve. Those clowns have no palates for a good vintage. They scarce know one wine from another and require only something upon which they can sozzle themselves.’

  At a table in one of a line of partitioned recesses they enjoyed their bottle and, meanwhile, Quatrevaux gave Roger quite a lot of information about Maître Léger’s household. The lawyer himself was a shrewd man and a not unkindly master. His wife, as Roger no doubt knew, was much younger than himself, a pretty creature and a born coquette. Old Fusier knew his law but otherwise was a dotard and rarely interfered with anybody. Brochard, who aspired to a partnership, really ran the place. He was both clever and exacting. His only interest outside the firm was politics. He was a reformer of the most rabid type and if the present discontents ever came to a head would prove dangerous. Douie, the third apprentice, on the other hand, was deeply religious, and the Church still wielded immense power in Brittany. He, Quatrevaux, was not himself a Breton; he hailed from Provence. As Brochard was a freethinker he and Douie often had terrific arguments.

  As the catalogue went on Roger gathered that these two were, apart from Maître Léger, the only serious people in the house. The others either lived the lives of cabbages or were solely concerned with a succession of ever-changing love affairs.

  ‘How is it that you have no tryst tonight?’ Roger inquired, after he had listened to Quatrevaux’s revelations about several of his colleagues’ illicit amours, made with evident approval.

  The handsome young Provençal gave him a sly look. ‘You have not met Manon Prudhot yet, have you? She is a niece of Maître Léger’s, and keeps house for him in Madame’s absence. She is a Parisien and infinitely superior to these little Rennes trollops with whom the others amuse themselves. Why should I go outside the house when such good fare is to be had within it?’

  As the clock struck the quarter they collected the six bottles of Vin Ordinaire, which to Roger’s relief cost only half a franc a-piece, and carried them back to their lodging. A few minutes later the rest of the apprentices began to arrive, pewter mugs were produced, the corks of the bottles were drawn and the small company settled down on their beds to toast Roger’s initiation.

  For some time the talk was general, with many allusions to the other inmates of the house and various girls of the town, which meant nothing to Roger; but then they began to ask him again about himself and he had to call largely upon his powers of invention.

  From the crosstalk that ensued he soon discovered that they were just primitive and boorish rather than malicious, and that, apart from Quatrevaux, he already knew far more of the world than all of them put together. They had all been brought up in a narrow parochial surroundings; none of them had ever been in a town larger than Rennes and his English public school education far surpassed anything they had received at the hands of Catholic priests in small town colleges.

  By the time five out of six bottles had been consumed he knew that he had created something of an impression and that they now regarded him with a certain respect, even if their admiration was somewhat offset by a grudging envy; so he felt that if he played his cards well he might be able to secure a reasonable deal from them. With a view to further enhancing his prestige he launched into an account of his sword fight with De Roubec, although retailing the affair as though it had occurred in Strasbourg and had resulted from a chance encounter with a drunken rake on the way home one night.

  At first they obviously believed him to be boasting and soon began to taunt him with half-drunken sneers of derision; but, quite good-humouredly, he pulled his long sword from under his bed, displayed it to their surprised gaze and said:

  ‘Believe me or not as you like, but I am perfectly prepared to fight anyone here, either in a fencing school with buttoned foils or somewhere outside the town with naked steel.’

  His half-playful announcement was followed by a brief, strained silence. He doubted if any of them had ever handled a sword in their lives, and felt certain that his challenge would not be accepted; but he waited with interest to see how they would take it.

  After a moment the hulking Hutot spoke up for the rest:

  ‘I am of the people and the rapier is not for such as us; but I am strong enough to break you in half, my little man, and you would remember a good kick from me for a month afterwards. While I am here you’ll show me the respect and service due to your elders.’

  Roger was quick to seize upon the point. He had known all along that he would never be able to intimidate Hutot, or overawe the others as long as they had the support of their senior; so he launched a project that he had in mind for splitting the party.

  ‘Monsieur Hutot,’ he said with sudden gravity. ‘Believe me, you will never find me lacking in respect to you or unwilling to oblige you in anything you may require of me. But I am sure you will agree that, since I am not an articled apprentice, I am entitled to suggest that my age should be the governing factor in whom I serve here and whom I do not.’

  ‘’Tis an innovation that I’ll not stand for,’ declared Douie.

  ‘You will hold your peace and do as you are bid,’ said Quatrevaux sharply. ‘How old are you, Breuc?’

  ‘Seventeen and three months,’ Roger lied, once more stretching his age to the maximum which he thought might pass as credible; yet, had he known it, he could safely have added another six months, since so impressed were they by his savoir-faire and comparative breadth of knowledge, they would still have believed him.

  ‘We celebrated Douie’s name-day towards the end of September,’ Quatrevaux remarked, ‘so he can be but seventeen and a few weeks. I am eighteen and a half, and Hutot nearly twenty.’

  ‘Very well, then,’ said Roger. ‘I will serve you, Monsieur Quatrevaux, and Monsieur Hutot, to the best of my ability, but the other three must arrange matters among themselves.’

  ‘’Tis all against our custom,’ demurred Hutot.

  ‘And what of the cleaning of the office?’ cried little Colas angrily. ‘I’ve done it daily for eight months and thought my time was nearing its end. Yet now, the sixth bed here is occupied, Maître Léger cannot take another apprentice until Hutot leaves, and that will not be till next Whitsuntide. ’Tis unjust that I should be saddled with it for sixteen months when the normal period is something less than a year.’

  For a moment it looked as though Roger’s plan for saving himself from becoming the general drudge hung again in the balance, but he said quickly:

  The office work I am prepared to share with you.’ Then picking up the last bottle of wine he refilled the glasses of the two seniors and added: ‘The decision rests with you, Monsieur Hutot, but in view of my age and the fact that I am not an articled apprentice I appeal to your sense of fairness.’

  Quatrevaux suddenly came to his assistance. ‘Breuc has made a good case. We are all lawyers her
e, and our rulings should be just ones.’

  ‘I’ll not start to run my own errands again,’ Douie put in suddenly, and the silent, stupid-looking Monestot nodded agreement.

  ‘Colas will continue to serve you two while Breuc looks after us,’ said Quatrevaux. ‘That is fair enough, is it not, Hutot?’

  The burly Hutot shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘As you will. So long as my needs are attended to without question I care not how the juniors arrange matters between themselves.’

  So the question was settled and now, half befuddled by the wine they had drunk, they went to bed: Roger feeling no little pleased with himself that his skilful diplomacy had succeeded in at least reducing his new masters from five to two.

  Next morning, having carried up the washing-water with Colas and helped him to clean out the office, Roger breakfasted with the others in the kitchen and, immediately afterwards, was set to work under Ruttot’s supervision on copying Latin documents.

  The senior copyist was a frail looking, bespectacled fellow of about thirty-five, who suffered from an habitual and irritating cough. He was a man of no ambition, having been a copyist for the past ten years and expecting to continue as one all his life. But he was competent at his work and evidently anxious that Roger should become so, too; as he took the trouble to make out a list for him of Latin legal expressions and helped him without grumbling whenever he found himself in difficulties.

  As Roger had feared, the work proved extremely monotonous and, as soon as its newness had worn off, he began to feel more than ever that Fate had played him a scurvy trick in forcing him to earn a pittance in such a manner.

  He soon found, too, that although he had saved himself from becoming the slave of all his colleagues, fagging for Hutot alone was worse than anything he had endured as a new boy at Sherborne. The only interests of this coarse and powerfully built young Breton were drink and women. Brigitte, the fresh-faced cook, was his permanent stand-by, but on such nights as he did not creep down to the little room that she occupied on the ground floor, and they were many, he left the house by stealth after it had been locked up to spend the best part of the night with other girls of loose morals who lived in the neighbourhood.