The Pupil (18 page)

He got out at Embankment and walked up to Charing Cross station, feeling vaguely un-Saturday-like in his crumpled suit. He had not, quite naturally, had time to hang it up last night. He reflected that his scholarship cheque was due to arrive next week, which normally would have helped. But his Barclaycard statement was imminent, and he now owed Leo a hundred pounds on top of that. He didn’t suppose that Leo was feeling particularly hard up because of it, but the idea of being in debt to him made Anthony peculiarly uncomfortable. In fact, after last night, he decided that it would be a good idea if he didn’t think about Leo at all, and stayed out of his way in chambers as much as possible. It shouldn’t be difficult.

It was not, in fact, at all difficult, since Leo had gone, with Roderick Hayter, to a conference of lawyers in Japan for two weeks, as Anthony discovered that Monday morning.

‘Leo’s got some work for you,’ Michael remarked to Anthony when he arrived. Anthony, in spite of his resolution, felt a little surge of surprise and pleasure. Maybe everything was going to return to normal, and all would be as it had been before. He was about to dump his things and go off to Leo’s room, when Michael threw some papers, neatly tied up with red tape, across to him.

‘He’s gone off for a couple of weeks to some conference. Said he thought you could probably make a good job of this while he’s away.’ Michael smiled encouragingly at Anthony, who stood motionless, acutely aware of his own disappointment. ‘A good sign, don’t you think? Leo seems to think there isn’t much you can’t handle on your own. Bodes well, I’d say.’

‘That’s true,’ replied Anthony, and returned the smile. He sat down and untied the papers, scanning them. It was something, after all, to be doing Leo’s work. It made him somehow closer. Anthony was scarcely conscious that these thoughts flowed through his mind.

The case was complex, but interesting, involving bills of exchange and letters of credit. Anthony worked on it through the morning, and, as Michael had a conference in his room that afternoon, took the papers off to the library after lunch to continue his work there. He found a vacant table in the gallery, tucked away between the shelves of Canadian Law Reports, where no one was likely to disturb him. He slid the papers along the dark polished
table to the window and sat down. As he sorted through the documents, there fell from between the sheaf of case notes that Leo had jotted down, a piece of paper. It was heavy, cream-coloured paper, the kind one wrote letters on, and covered with a few lines of writing in Leo’s neat, dashing hand. Anthony picked it up and looked at it. It was a poem. He read:

That was all. Anthony turned the paper over. There was nothing on the other side. He looked at the verse again, without comprehension. ‘That you were once unkind befriends me now’. He liked that. It struck him that this was part of a poem, although not one he recognised. It was with a small thrill of surprise that it suddenly occurred to him that the poem was perhaps meant for him. He felt himself flush, even in the cool, calm silence of the library, and folded the paper quickly and put it in his pocket.

It was not until a few nights later that he remembered it. He and Julia had spent much of the evening in the bar with Edward in some hilarity, Anthony conscious that he was allowing himself to drift back into the same pattern as before, spending more than he had, seeing people that he only half-liked, idling away his time, but happy that he was with Julia. They had gone back to
her flat, and he was lying on the sofa, a little drunk, his tie and jacket off, watching the news with Julia and drinking coffee. He glanced across at his jacket and was thinking that he really should hang it up, when he thought of the piece of paper. He got up and felt in the pockets for it. He found it and pulled it out, and went back to the sofa with it.

‘What’s that?’ asked Julia, as he unfolded it.

‘I don’t really know,’ replied Anthony. ‘It’s just something I found. I think it’s part of a poem, but I’m not sure.’

‘Here, let’s have a look,’ said Julia with interest, taking the paper from him. She rather prided herself on being well read. She read the lines over to herself. ‘It sounds Shakespearian. Or Elizabethan, at any rate.’ She got up and went over to the tall bookcases. ‘There must be some Shakespeare sonnets amongst this lot,’ she said, scanning the rows of books. ‘Poetry. Yes, here we are.’ And she pulled out a volume and brought it back to where Anthony was trying to watch the weather forecast with one eye shut. ‘I shouldn’t think this has been opened much,’ she remarked, flipping through the pages. ‘Here we go. Index of first lines. “That you were once unkind …”’ She riffled again through the pages. ‘There. Told you it was Shakespeare.’ She handed the book to Anthony with a pleased little smile, then picked up the coffee cups and took them out to the kitchen.

Anthony felt his heart lurch painfully as he read, knowing without a doubt that Leo had meant this for him. He felt himself redden, and closed his eyes. Without fully understanding that which he read, he was aware that this was, without question, a letter of love. The words were more beautiful, in their half-hidden sense, than anything more direct that Leo might have said to him. More poignant still, it came as though in secret, cloaked in verse. He opened his eyes and read it again, devouring it, pulling the meaning of each lovely phrase close to himself, seeking some meaning in the lines that could only be for him, for them alone. As Julia returned, he looked up, mildly shocked and ashamed.

‘Well?’ she said, sitting down beside him, her arm round his neck, peering at the book over his shoulder.

‘I still don’t understand it,’ he said, closing the book.

‘Here, let me read it,’ she said, pulling the book from his hands. She found the page and read out loud, slowly and
well. He listened with his head thrown back and his eyes closed. ‘It’s very beautiful,’ she said when she had finished, scanning the lines again. ‘I think he means that the other person – I mean, the woman, or whoever it’s written for – is indebted to him just as much as he is to her, because they’ve hurt each other in some way. It binds them.’ She yawned. ‘I think that’s what it’s about, anyway.’

She tossed the book to one side, kissed Anthony briefly and smiled at him. He looked back at her sweet face, trying to unlock his mind. He shook his head rapidly, as though to clear it.

‘I can’t take these sessions in the bar,’ he said, rubbing his face. ‘I’m going to feel rather the worse for wear tomorrow.’

‘Well, come to bed,’ Julia said, pulling at his hands. ‘I want you …’ She paused and laughed, trying to read his face. ‘To tell me what I should wear to the May Ball.’

‘The May Ball?’

‘The May Ball. The one that’s being held in Inner Temple Gardens. It’s going to be fantastic. There’s going to be an enormous marquee, and a really good band. Lots of champagne. Someone said the Queen Mother’s coming.’

‘Well, well,’ said Anthony, ‘that’s a big draw. But I can’t afford that! The tickets will cost a fortune!’ His mind had come back to earth.

‘Oh, Anthony, come on!
Everyone’s
going. You can’t not go. Please!’ He said nothing, but he knew that he would have to go; he would never hear the end of it if he didn’t. He felt too sleepy to argue.

It was only some hours later, when he woke without
reason in the night, that he realised the words of the poem were still coursing through his brain.

‘“Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me”,’ he repeated softly to himself in the darkness. He glanced across at Julia’s sleeping form, just discernible. He touched her hair lightly and squeezed his eyes tight shut, as though to rid himself of some other vision.

Anthony sat in chambers surveying the wreckage of his finances. On one side of a sheet of paper he had set out his income – this consisted of his scholarship money and a £200 figure with a question mark beside it – and on the other he had listed his outgoings. He sighed as he contemplated these. They could be summed up, he reflected, in a single word. Julia. There was, of course, his debt to Leo; he knew that he could probably safely leave it out of account for the present, but it still made him uneasy. And the May Ball was eating a bigger hole in his purse than he had anticipated. On top of the thirty pounds for the ticket, there was evening dress to hire, and there would be the expenses of the evening, of course. He did not see how he was possibly going to manage all this without extra financial help from somewhere, and so, as he had done so often in the past, he had been casting around to find out what grants and prizes were going at the moment. He had discovered that the Benchers of Middle
Temple had set an essay competition, the compelling title of which was ‘Aspects of the Administrative Jurisdiction of the Divisional Court’. Anthony fancied that there were not likely to be many entrants. It carried a prize of two hundred pounds – hence its tentative place in the list of his finances – and Anthony, who had become well accustomed over the years to supplementing his income by entering for any and all such prizes, saw no reason why he should not win it. Experience had taught him much; he was adept at judging the proportions of originality to academic merit required by the judges of such things.

He got up and walked over to the window, staring down at the figures coming and going across the courtyard. He glanced over at the car park, and was suddenly aware that his eyes were seeking, and not finding, the dark, familiar shape of Leo’s Porsche. He realised that he had, without admitting it to himself, customarily wandered over to the window every morning at ten, which was when Leo usually arrived, and watched for the silver-haired figure to stride briskly across the courtyard towards chambers. He was forced to acknowledge that the days of Leo’s absence had seemed long and empty ones, despite the fact of Julia. He realised now how, over the months, his ear had learnt to half-listen for the sound of Leo’s voice, his footstep on the stair, and that he had lived, in a small way, for Leo’s fleeting visits to Michael’s room, when the air would come alive and all the other moments of the day would seem to find their focus. He acknowledged this now, as he stood by the window. Something in him was waiting for Leo to return, though to what end he could not imagine.

He stood for a moment, then returned to his desk and to his calculations. He stared at the piece of paper for a moment, groaned, and laid his head on his desk. At that moment Michael came in and, glancing down at the dark head, remarked, ‘Forgive me for saying so, but don’t you think you need a haircut?’ He hung up his coat and then went back outside to get himself a cup of coffee, and reappeared. Anthony sighed and looked up.

‘You’re right,’ he replied. ‘I’ll get one at lunchtime.’ Then he picked up the scrap of paper containing the details of the essay competition, and handed it to Michael, who took it and read it. ‘Where can I find out everything there is to know about the functions of the Divisional Court?’ asked Anthony.

‘Good God,’ said Michael with a smile, ‘times must be hard.’ He took a sip of his coffee and laughed, rather unnecessarily, Anthony thought. ‘Tell you what,’ he said after a moment or two, ‘Cameron gave a paper a year or so ago that had something in it about the Divisional Court. Why don’t you go and ask him if you can have a look at it? He’s always got an original turn of mind. He came in with me – go and catch him before he starts work.’

Anthony went off to seek out Cameron Renshaw, who inhabited one of the larger, darker rooms at the top of the building, opposite Roderick Hayter’s. Although Cameron was a popular figure in chambers, Anthony found him somewhat intimidating. He was a tall, bulky, glowering man with a roaring voice and a powerful but unpredictable mind. It was Anthony’s policy to steer clear of him, although Edward appeared not to be in the least bit in awe
of him, despite Cameron’s obvious contempt for Edward’s intellectual shortcomings. Anthony found him staring at his bookshelves, muttering under his breath. He was rather impressed by the state of Cameron’s room, which was in stark contrast to Leo’s. Untidy dark shelves and assorted small tables overflowed with papers, folders and files stood in jumbled heaps on the floor, their frail cardboard corners bulging with documents, and briefs lined the windowsill in jostling array. Anthony wondered how any lawyer could possibly work in such confusion. Two old wig tins, a battered wooden collar box, and Cameron’s shabby silk gown lay in a heap behind the door. The air held the powdery, mouldering smell of old paper, ink, and cigars. It reminded Anthony of the room of a certain jurisprudence professor at university.

‘Excuse me,’ said Anthony gently, when Cameron failed to notice him.

‘What? Yes?’ Cameron wheeled round, examining the space where Anthony stood.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ said Anthony, ‘but I’m doing some work concerning the Divisional Court, and Michael said that you did a paper on it a while ago. I wondered—’

‘A paper! A paper?’ Cameron stared at him. Then after a pause, ‘Yes! Yes, quite right. I remember now. It was to the Minneapolis Bar Association. Piece of nonsense. Excellent paper, utterly wasted on those tuppenny-ha’penny Americans. Come in, come in.’ Anthony came in and closed the door behind him, and stepped over a small pile of books. ‘Cross, isn’t it? Yes, yes.’

He scratched his head, hitched his braces, and began to
pull a series of loose-leaf folders off the shelves and thumb through them. He talked continually as he did so.

‘Now, let’s see … Air Space Treaties … You were at Bristol, weren’t you? Knew someone who lectured there – Leslie Morris. Know him? Bit before your time, maybe … You got a first, didn’t you? Yes, I remember that. Very creditable. Let’s see … “Judgments in a Foreign Currency: a Commentary”. No, not what you’re after. Rather good, that, though. Went down very well.’ He thumbed through some sheets, chuckling. ‘Rather good.’

It struck Anthony that this search might prove well-nigh impossible, as he gazed around at the chaos. Cameron put the last folder back with a sigh. ‘No. That’s where I usually keep ’em. Can’t understand why it’s not there. Tell you what. Why don’t you run down and see if one of the girls has it on their word processor? It’s called “Functions of the Courts of England and Wales”. Something like that.’

It seemed to Anthony unlikely that something from a year ago would have been kept, but he trotted downstairs to enquire. Violet, who usually did Michael’s work and whom Anthony knew best, looked blank when he made his request.

‘Ooh, I haven’t a clue, dear. Ask Sandra – she usually does for Mr Renshaw. Sandra!’ she called across to a thin, middle-aged woman who was working at a keyboard with what seemed to Anthony to be quite extraordinary rapidity. ‘Sandra, do you remember a paper of Mr Renshaw’s of a year ago? Something about court functions.’ She turned to Anthony. ‘You tell her what it was, dear.’ She called across
to Sandra again. ‘Mr Cross’ll tell you what it was called, Sandra.’

Anthony made his way over to Sandra’s desk and told her the name of the paper. She did not look up, but gazed at the screen in front of her, her fingers still flying across the keyboard. She pulled her earphones off and asked Anthony to repeat it, sat for a moment, and then nodded. When she spoke, it was not to Anthony, but back to Violet.

‘Yes, I remember that now, Vi – that big long thing, remember, that he kept coming down and changing. Got on my bloody nerves, that thing did.’ Then she looked at Anthony. ‘That’s going back a while, mind. But you might be lucky. I try not to throw any of his long things away. Goes bloody mad if I do. Let’s have a look.’

She pulled a box of computer disks from a drawer and riffled through them. Then she pulled out another and tried that. From that she took a disk, looked at it speculatively, and slotted it into her machine. Anthony gazed at the magic screen as the list of contents flashed up in green letters. Sandra ran through them, then stopped. ‘There you are. Told you I never throw his long stuff out. You want this now?’

‘If you don’t mind,’ said Anthony, with charming diffidence. Sandra glanced at him wryly. She liked young Mr Cross; she always liked a good-looking man. Her weakness, really.

‘All right, then. I should strictly be finishing this affidavit for Mr Hayter, but seeing as it’s you …’ Anthony smiled at her.

‘That’s really very kind of you,’ he said, winning her
heart completely. Sandra sat and Anthony watched as the machine poured forth words onto paper, sheet after sheet. When it was complete, she handed it to Anthony, and he thanked her again.

‘He’s a lovely boy, that,’ she remarked to Violet after Anthony had left. ‘They say he’s very bright, too.’

‘He may be lovely and bright,’ replied Violet, who was less susceptible to young masculine charms and had a more jaundiced view of the world, ‘but he’s not Sir Basil’s nephew, is he?’ She looked meaningfully at Sandra, who sighed and said again that he was a lovely boy, and that it was a pity, really.

Anthony returned to Cameron’s room with the copy of the paper, and handed it to him.

‘Ah! Still had it, did they? Knew they would.’ He rose from his chair, hitching his braces with one hand, and took the sheaf of papers over to the window. ‘Let’s see. Here’s the bit you want.’ He read for a moment, then shook his head. ‘Good stuff, this.’ Cameron was a great admirer of his own work. He read out loud, ‘“General principles governing prerogative remedies”. Hmm. Can’t think what the Minneapolis Bar Association made of that. Still.’ He handed the few relevant sheets to Anthony, eyeing him with curiosity. ‘What d’you want this for, anyway? What does Michael want with stuff on the Divisional Court?’

‘Oh, it’s not for Michael,’ replied Anthony. ‘It’s for an essay I’m doing. Something the Benchers have set. I thought I might have a shot at it.’

‘An essay? Good God, you’re not doing it for the fun
of it, are you? I mean, you’re not one of those, are you?’ exclaimed Cameron. Anthony smiled.

‘Well, I hope not. It’s just that – there’s a two-hundred-pound prize, and I need the money.’ Cameron said nothing, but stared at him. What hell it was, he thought, being a student. Two hundred pounds. The price of a couple of decent bottles of claret.

‘Well, good luck,’ he said.

‘Thank you,’ replied Anthony. ‘And thank you for this.’ He held up the sheets of paper. ‘I’m very grateful.’

‘Not at all,’ said Cameron. ‘Hope it’s not too out of date. Glad to be of help.’

He sat for a moment after Anthony had gone. Nice chap, Cross. Seemed a good deal brighter than that poultice, Choke. Not an Oxbridge man, though. Shame. Bad luck, too, coming to chambers in the same year as Sir Basil’s nephew. Unfortunate timing, really. Still, a bright lad like that would probably do well anywhere. With that thought, Cameron turned to the jumble of work that lay spread out on his desk.

Anthony was looking forward to the May Ball with mixed feelings. He knew the nature of such things from his university days, and they were not entirely to his taste. He sometimes wished that he could behave with the lack of restraint that he saw in others, who enjoyed such things with high-spirited and unselfconscious abandon. On the other hand, it made something of a welcome break from his essay on the Divisional Court and the long hours that both he and Michael were presently putting in on an appeal from
an arbitration award; the past four days had been spent in court.

On Tuesday, the day before the Ball, people passing through stopped to watch the enormous marquee being erected in Inner Temple Gardens. The air was thick with summer heat, as often happens in late May, and a general sense of carelessness and excitement infected the more junior reaches of the Bar. Julia had already tried on her new dress several times, delighted with the peacock shimmer of its taffeta folds and strapless bodice. On the first of these occasions, Anthony had eyed her for a long moment before gently unzipping her.

‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ she said to her reflection, as the gown slipped rustling to her knees. ‘Mummy is perfectly wonderful, sometimes. It cost an absolute fortune.’

‘Beautiful. But I think I prefer you without it. Can’t you go to the Ball like this?’ murmured Anthony, his lips on her bare shoulders, his hands over her small, naked breasts. At times like these, he thought, he didn’t care if he had to starve for months, just so long as he could have her. It was only at other times, away from her pliant, desirable body and lovely face, that a whisper of doubt would creep into his mind.

It was there that Tuesday, as he sat in court with Michael, listening to the drone of argument from their opposing counsel, the portly Mr Farrant. They had lost the case, in the face of a particularly unsympathetic judge, and Michael had spent Tuesday morning putting forward arguments as to why they should be given leave to appeal the judgment in
the Court of Appeal. Now Mr Farrant was endeavouring, at what seemed to be interminable length, to persuade the judge to the contrary.

‘… your Lordship has had the opportunity of hearing wide-ranging argument, and I think both my learned friend and I are grateful for the attention paid to it by your Lordship in your Lordship’s judgment. That being the case, it is often said that the matter should rest with the Commercial Court judge, and I would so submit. Our third point is this …’

Mr Justice Cox nodded mournfully and Anthony’s attention strayed, returning to Julia and the eternal problem of how – or rather, whether – he could afford to go on seeing her. He had been through all this once before, and now here he was, right back where he had started, or rather, where he had finished. It was simply that, every time he saw her, he wanted to take her to bed. It was a difficult habit to break. The problem of money seemed to be getting worse now that summer was looming. She had talked of Henley, taking it for granted that he would want to go, and of tickets for Wimbledon, of a trip to France that Piers was arranging. She smiled and chattered and smiled and cajoled … Anthony couldn’t see where it was going to stop. As he had predicted to himself, now that the days were long and warm she was no longer content to curl up with Anthony and a bottle of wine. She wanted to sit in the gardens of riverside pubs and listen to amusing conversation, or to have supper at smart little restaurants where the music was cool and the windows were open to the summer air.