The Pupil (15 page)

‘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 young 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.

As the minutes ticked by, Leo stood in the darkness of his bedroom, his fists clenched. There had been a time, years ago, when the loss of such a love might have broken his heart. Now he merely felt robbed of pride.

He heard the purr of the taxi in the mews outside, and went back into the living room. Anthony was sitting on the sofa, gazing ahead of him, rubbing his temples with his hands. He jumped up when he became aware of Leo.

‘Your taxi’s here.’

‘Thank you,’ said Anthony, looking at him anxiously, miserably. But Leo could not help him. One tender word, one kind touch, and he would be lost. He should have known better. He smiled firmly at Anthony and picked his jacket up, held it for a moment, then handed it to the young man.

He followed Anthony downstairs to the door, and out into the chilly night air. As Anthony got into the cab, Leo leant in at the front window and handed a ten-pound note to the driver. Anthony wanted to stop him, but it was too late. He pulled down the window and looked at Leo. But he was standing in the shadows and Anthony could not see his face.

‘Thank you for dinner,’ he said to the shadows.

‘Not at all,’ came the reply.

‘Where to, mate?’ asked the cabbie, eyeing him curiously in the mirror.

Lying back in the darkness of the taxi on the way to Chay’s Islington squat, Anthony felt hot tears behind his eyelids. He tried to force his mind away from the events of the evening, but his thoughts kept returning to that shadowed room, and to Leo’s compelling, warm touch and voice. He had never heard words of love spoken so simply and starkly before. Not even Julia had touched his heart as Leo had done. He had never felt such pure affection for another man and in that brittle moment it had been shattered. For an instant, Anthony recognised the burden that Leo had to carry. There could be no resolution of his feelings if his love were not returned in kind. If rejected, as Anthony had rejected him, that which remained unspoken between them must remain so for ever, and as for those words which had been spoken, it must be as though they had never been said. All the affection and intimacy which, he now realised, he had so hopelessly misunderstood, had vanished like mist. It was he, Anthony, who had been rejected – not as a lover, as he had rejected Leo, but as a friend.

The bitter torment of his thoughts continued until at last they reached his father’s flat. The taxi halted and Anthony got out, glancing at the metre. Eleven pounds thirty. He felt in his pocket and produced two pound coins, which he handed to the driver. When the driver called goodnight, Anthony said nothing; he did not hear him. He mounted the dark stairway to Chay’s flat, fished out his key, unlocked the door, and went in. As he stood in the dark hallway, he suddenly wondered why he had come. There was no light, no electricity. The flat was cold, even colder than the night outside. The few pieces of furniture, rugs,
lamps, and the now precious canvases, lay dumped in a cheerless heap on the floorboards, where he had left them after evacuating them from Bridget’s.

Anthony groaned and leant against the wall. The brandy and the events of the past hour had given him a raging headache. His mood of aching melancholy was gradually giving way to vague nausea and genuine misery. Like a child who has received a bruising shock, he now wanted only to sleep. He deeply desired oblivion from the vivid thoughts of Leo. He waited, shivering, for his eyes to accustom themselves to the gloom, then he walked over to the mound of objects at the end of the room. He disentangled Chay’s shabby futon and a duvet; it felt damp with the chill. Nevertheless, he wrapped it around himself and sat in the middle of the bed, as though waiting for something, someone. He thought fleetingly of Leo, of the green dressing gown, of his warm grasp – fleetingly only, for his mind shied instinctively away from the memory of their kiss. To obliterate the very night, Anthony lay down and pulled the slippery edge of the duvet over his head. It smelt faintly of joss sticks, a smell that Anthony had long associated with his father. For a moment the thought of him, surprisingly, gave Anthony a little stab of mournfulness. He wondered in whose gullible eyes, on the other side of the world, at 6 p.m. California time, Chay was currently recreating himself.

It is all a search for a mirror image, he thought, this quest for love. He thought again, in spite of himself, of his confession of love to Leo. The moment had expanded itself, he remembered, as he had searched the older man’s face,
as though seeking a reflection of his own heart. But it had not been there. After a long time spent lying in the cold, utterly silent half-darkness, Anthony finally fell asleep, his innocence folded around him as tightly as Chay’s duvet.

In Mayfair, Leo lay in his warm, quiet bedroom, wide awake, watching the green ciphers on his bedside clock, tracing in his memory the contours of Anthony’s white throat, faintly pulsing, and his sleeping face as the guitar notes had trembled in the air.

When he awoke the next morning, a mild hangover and the desolation of his surroundings combined to make Anthony feel wretched. The sunshine outside and the happy hum of Islington on a Saturday morning exacerbated his sense of loneliness. He felt worse from having slept in his clothes. He uncrumpled himself from the folds of the duvet and wandered into the grimy little bathroom. He splashed his face with cold water, realised there was no towel, and gazed at himself in the mirror. He was vaguely surprised to see his face gazing back at him in its normal way, not haggard with despair or pale from misery. Cheered, he counted out his money and, locking the flat behind him, made his way to the nearest McDonald’s for breakfast. He bought a copy of
Today
on the way, and by the time he had finished his Egg McMuffin and coffee, felt better. Seen in the broad light of day, the events of the previous evening seemed less dramatic and even faintly pathetic. Or at any rate, the perspective had shifted enough for Anthony to persuade himself to see them that way. He tried to dismiss it all from his mind, only reflecting with momentary disquiet that Leo would not,
after last night, be especially keen to see Anthony stay on at Caper Court indefinitely. Still, that was just something he would have to live with.

In fact, as he shaved that morning after a particularly bad night’s sleep – eating out late in expensive restaurants was beginning to disagree with his digestion – Leo was reflecting that, as things had turned out, he would not have to make any particular endeavour to ensure that Edward became the next tenant. Had events been otherwise, it would naturally not have done for his lover to occupy the same set of chambers as himself. As it was, let Anthony do as he deserved. He finished shaving and took some more Milk of Magnesia to ease the vague pain near his heart.

Returning to the flat, Anthony bundled up the duvet and pushed Chay’s futon back into a corner. Then he dragged out the canvases stacked in a heap on the floor. He turned one over, half-expecting, after Jocasta’s telephone call, the light of genius to shine forth as he gazed on it. But no – he was looking at Chay’s familiar and rather depressing daubs. This one was especially unrevealing. It consisted of a series of crimson rectangles which faded in perspective into a welling pool of what looked like yellow ochre, edged with dirty white. He turned it on its side; the effect was distinctly better, he thought. Given a suitably enigmatic title, no doubt it could hang with quite as much honesty as any other piece of modern art on the walls of a New York gallery. Sighing, he examined the rest of the canvases. They were all abstracts, except for one which seemed to be a particularly ugly representation of a nude woman, whom
Anthony thought he recognised as a long-gone lover. He didn’t really think, surveying the picture, that any woman could possibly have breasts like that. He put it to one side. The rest he stacked gently against a wall. Then he stood back, thought for a moment, and fetched a rug from the heap of furniture and draped it carefully over the pictures. There might, he reflected, be hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of rather bad painting leaning against that wall.

Amused by his morning’s doings, he locked up and went out into the morning sunshine.

‘Guess what?’ he announced to his mother, on arriving home. She was sitting cross-legged on a large moth-eaten Indian cushion, marking exercise books to the background of an Open University programme. She had grown her dark hair longer recently, Anthony noticed, and now it fell in a shining curtain over one half of her face as she bent over her work. She was wearing only a loose cotton robe, new from a Japanese shop in Kensington, and it struck Anthony that she looked rather pretty, younger than her thirty-nine years. She didn’t look up when he came in.

‘What? I wish you would tell me when you’re going to be out all night. I still get worried, you know.’ She knew better than to ask where he had been. He volunteered little information, normally, regarding his activities. He had told her, to her unspoken relief, of the demise of Bridget, and had mentioned Julia once or twice. She knew that it was unlikely that Anthony would bring Julia home to meet her.

Anthony flopped into an armchair. His hangover, although now receding, had left a hollow vibration in his nervous system; he felt jangled and tired.

‘Sorry. I forgot. The fact is, I spent the night at Dad’s.’

She looked up, tucking her hair behind her ears. ‘Why? I thought he was in America?’

‘He is,’ said Anthony, and then told her about Jocasta’s phone call and Chay’s new-found fame as an abstract artist in the eager-to-be-pleased world of the West Coast. She laughed, as he had known she would.

‘My God,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘He does land on his feet. I remember when I first met him he was convinced that the modern art world was a complete con. He used to say that anyone, no matter how talentless, could become famous if they knew how to market a thing properly.’

‘I wonder if he still thinks that?’ mused Anthony.

‘I doubt it.’ Judith uncrossed her legs and stood up, tightening the belt of her robe as she went into the kitchen. ‘I suspect he’s grown less cynical over the years. I think he always seriously thought he was a good artist. Coffee?’

Anthony followed her into the kitchen and began to rummage in the fridge for some cheese. ‘No thanks.’ He pulled out the remains of a lump of Cheddar, looked at it, and put it back. ‘Anyway, I went over last night to see what there was at the flat – pictures, I mean. His girlfriend said now was the time to root out his stuff and jump on the bandwagon. Well,’ he added, peering into the biscuit tin, ‘she didn’t put it quite like that. But that was the general idea. So I had a look round. I’d forgotten they’d turned his electricity off, so I slept there and had a look round this morning.’

‘And?’

‘And there are about six or seven canvases that look like the usual thing you see in modern art galleries. Pretty bloody, if you ask me.’

Judith smiled as she carried her coffee back into the living room. ‘Funnily enough,’ she said, settling herself back onto her cushion, ‘I’ve still got a whole collection of his drawings and things. Things he used to do when I first met him.’ She sipped her coffee. ‘I wonder if they’re worth anything now.’

‘Not in the long run, I shouldn’t imagine,’ replied Anthony. ‘As for the present, I wouldn’t say he’s exactly found worldwide fame. Just a little bit of a cult following amongst the art-lovers of California, from what I can gather. I wouldn’t imagine they’d be of any interest to anyone over here. Anyway,’ he added, stretching, ‘it’s paintings they want.’ He wanted to change the subject; the matter of Len’s money was on his mind. Seven days had turned into six.

‘I think I’ll have a look through them later, at any rate,’ mused Judith, resuming her marking. Anthony picked up the paper and flicked through it for a moment or two.

‘Mum?’ he said. ‘I was wondering …’

‘Mmm?’

‘Could you let me have an advance on my scholarship money? Say, a hundred or so?’

‘What for?’ she asked, without looking up. This sounded hopeful to Anthony, but she added before he could reply, ‘You know I can’t give you that much in one go.’

‘Oh. Oh, well, not to worry.’

‘What did you want it for?’

‘Oh, nothing. A new suit. I thought my old one was getting a bit shabby.’

‘Well, if you will go around sleeping in it.’ She paused. ‘Are you going out tonight?’

‘No – that is, I don’t know. Why?’ His mother went a little pink, and then bent her head over the books.

‘I’m having someone over to dinner. He’s a new teacher at school. Teaches art.’

‘Oh.’ Anthony was surprised, but pleased. ‘Oh, well, in that case I probably am.’ She looked up, and they smiled at one another. No wonder she’s looking rather nice these days, he thought. ‘You can show him Chay’s drawings and get a professional opinion, then, can’t you?’

After a dreary weekend, one in which only his severe lack of money prevented him from ringing Julia, Anthony arrived at chambers on Monday morning to find some mail waiting on his desk. This was unprecedented. It was a magazine, sent airmail from the States. He undid the wrapper and stared at it. It was called
Metropolis
, and apparently cost $4.80. Bemused, he gazed at the cover picture of a steel spiral, and then the words ‘Chay Cross – The Primal Moment Arrives’ caught his eye. He laughed out loud and flipped through the pages until he came to the article on his father. It was long and extremely difficult to read, due largely to the impenetrability of the language, but Anthony gathered that its tone was complimentary.

There was more, much more, on these lines. Turning the page, Anthony was confronted by colour reproductions of Chay’s work. They all looked largely like the ones at the squat, although cleaner and more colourful. Beneath the pictures were little one-line legends: ‘Combines
subversive wit with melancholy power’; ‘A wonderfully adroit manipulation of enticing images’. Anthony stared at them, read the lines over, and wondered whether he lacked the insight of these critics. Then he sighed, gave up, and turned back to the text. Its tone was unquestionably one of excited awe. He flipped through the pages, wondering whether Jocasta had sent a note with the magazine about the London gallery. Then he realised that this must have been mailed before she had spoken to him. Smiling, he tucked the magazine into his briefcase, intending to show it to his mother that evening.

As he did so, he heard voices on the landing outside. The door opened, and Michael came in with Leo. Anthony felt his pulse surge. Leo glanced calmly, almost unseeingly, at Anthony as he carried on talking to Michael. It seemed to Anthony as though some sudden force had whirled into the calm of his mind. He closed his briefcase with shaking hands, and glanced quickly up as though to drink in, in one swift draught, the vivid charm of Leo’s form and face, the masculine grace of his hands as he set some papers down on Michael’s desk, the loose ease with which he settled into a chair as he talked. His very presence seemed to charge the air. Anthony was reminded suddenly of his emotions at seeing Julia for the first time in a long time, that evening that they had first gone out together. Then, as now, the air surrounding the beloved object seemed to possess some special luminosity. This, in no more than the merest brush of a glance. He pulled some papers from the drawer of his desk, murmuring an apparently abstracted ‘Good morning’ to both men, then gazed down unseeingly at the printed
page before him. His heart beat heavily, as though it must be heard. Blindly, Anthony contemplated the confusion of his own emotions. He had thought, on Saturday morning, in the chill and fret of the desolate squat and his own hangover, that there would be no more intensity of feeling – that the thread, which had been vibrating unseen between them, had snapped, the tension lost. He had buried whatever emotion he had felt beneath the grey domesticity of the weekend, setting Leo and Friday evening away from himself, refusing to contemplate either. It had been false, he knew, damnably false. He realised, with appalled certainty, that whatever painful, powerful attraction had grown within him for this man was there still. By his own hand, he had sought, on Friday night, to wrench it out of existence, deny it life. He had only succeeded, he saw, in destroying the green, living part, while the root remained. He longed to – but could not – look at Leo again. He stared instead at his work, mechanically turning one unread page after the other.

Things were little better for Leo, despite his demeanour. He had caught up with Michael on his way from the car park, had idly engaged him in some spurious conversation concerning a case they had between them, hoping to prolong it as far as Michael’s room, where he knew Anthony would probably already be. He had felt, in spite of himself, a mounting sense of hope and faint excitement as they had climbed the stairs. His mouth was a little dry as they entered the room. He could do no more than cast the briefest, most aloof of glances at Anthony, feeling as he did so, scanning the dark, familiar features for the clearest of seconds, a sharp stab of love. So he was lost, after all. There
was to be no mastery, no ability, with maturity, to set his heart aside and ignore his love.

Neither looked at the other for the rest of the time that Leo spent talking to Michael. There was no need. For both men the tension and the vivid awareness of the other was electric. Anthony found it almost unbearable, particularly because he longed, with all of his heart, for the feeling to vanish, never to have been. After a time he looked up, conscious of his heart tightening as he looked at Leo, who was talking with idle amusement of some mutual acquaintance. When he stood up to leave, tapping his thigh lightly with his newspaper, he glanced over at Anthony for a second or two. His eyes as they met Anthony’s were cool, detached.

‘You know, don’t you,’ he remarked to Michael, his eyes still on Anthony, ‘about our great affair – Anthony’s and mine, that is – collapsing into a pile of dust on Friday?’

For a second, Anthony’s mind felt paralysed. But Michael merely replied, ‘The stevedore case? Settled, did it? Well, it’s just astonishing that the thing dragged on for as long as it did. Still, more money in the bank.’ Leo smiled lightly, and tapped Anthony’s desk with his newspaper.

‘I hope Anthony didn’t find his time entirely wasted.’

‘No,’ replied Anthony, looking up briefly, ‘it was fascinating. I’m almost sorry it’s finished.’ He found himself speaking in spite of himself, abhorred the innuendo, didn’t want this conversation to continue.

‘Maybe Leo will find something else for you once we’ve finished with this hearing,’ said Michael. ‘His work always seems a good deal more exciting than mine.’

‘I shouldn’t think I would have anything that would
interest him much,’ said Leo, opening the door. ‘Though we can always see.’

As he went downstairs to his room, he clenched the newspaper tightly in his fist. God, why had he done that? Why had he let this whole business get the better of him? He should just have left well alone. The boy had made it clear enough on Friday night that he wasn’t interested. That ludicrous conversation. Those absurd
double entendres
… It was always the way, he knew. Distance from the object of one’s passion lent a certain detachment; one could resolve, coldly, not to allow oneself to be manipulated by useless feelings. But then one was in the presence of that person again, and one was borne hopelessly along. He had been so near, within touching distance. He sat in his chair, surveying sightlessly the spotless calm of his room. This must stop. There was, there could be, no point.

At his desk, Anthony was endeavouring to read and comprehend the work before him. He had dwelt too long on Leo’s last look as he left the room; had sought, in spite of himself, for some meaning. But the blue eyes had been cold, almost mocking, and that little game of words had been played merely to vanquish any trace of conceit that Leo thought Anthony might have had after Friday night. He wished that events had never happened, that he could still enjoy being with Leo as he had done only a few days ago. But he knew that the game had moved on; the rules were altered, and it was now one that he did not think he could possibly play.

On Wednesday morning Anthony received a brief letter from his father, giving him the name of the gallery in New Bond Street, where he was to take the paintings.