Transmigration (16 page)

 

 

"I see. Congratulations."

 

 

"It's the first time I took money from her!" Gerry shouted, sensing and
resenting the criticism.

 

 

"Because previously you had no difficulty in getting it from me?

 

 

"Well, I've got to get it from somewhere, haven't I?"

 

 

"You got your pay only yesterday. Apparently you drank it all. That's
your privilege, Gerry. But it entails going without lunch and walking
to and from work."

 

 

"I had to have a smoke, didn't I? I can see you going without your fifty
fags a day!"

 

 

Fletcher let that go. It was manifestly unfair to point out that Baudaker
had not had a cigarette all day. However true that was, it was only a
half-truth.

 

 

Gerry suddenly abandoned defiance and pleaded. "Look, Dad, I only got
fifteen bob from Sheila. I've got to have money, or I can't go out."

 

 

"Then it looks as if you'll have to stay in."

 

 

Gerry released a stream of profanity and abuse and then, suddenly silent,
took a step forward.

 

 

"I'll take it," said Gerry wildly. "Your wallet's in your breast pocket."

 

 

"Gerry!" said Fletcher warningly. Curiously, although neither he nor
Baudaker knew anything about fighting, and abhorred such violence, he
was totally unafraid. He understood for the first time the courage of
mothers and old women in the face of violence.

 

 

"I'm going to belt you one," said Gerry viciously.

 

 

Fletcher sensed the weakening. The next thing would be a stream of oaths,
a paean of self-incitement.

 

 

"Congratulations again," said Fletcher. "In anticipation."

 

 

Goaded, Gerry swung a murderous blow. But Fletcher diverted his arm and
hit out carefully, coolly.

 

 

Gerry crashed back against the wall and slid to the floor.

 

 

--Well, well, observed Fletcher, ignoring Baudaker's frantic desire to
see if the glassy-eyed youth was all right.

 

 

--Evidently we owe something to Ross. Neither of us could have done
that. And it needed doing.

 

 

It did need doing. From then on Gerry was sullen but otherwise less
antisocial. He bore no grudge: if you told someone you were going to
hit him and rob him, and he hit you, you had no comeback. Sometimes,
not out of fear, because he would never fear Baudaker though he had
learned a certain caution, he made small, tentative advances to which
Baudaker wanted to respond overwhelmingly. Fletcher didn't let him. Love
and license had failed with Gerry; it had to be love tempered with a
certain paternal authority which Baudaker had never imposed.

 

 

It was strange that Fletcher could help him to exert this, since Fletcher
had less paternal experience than Baudaker, but what he had learned from
Judy and from Ross gave him an idea of the kind of control young people
reluctantly accepted and the kind they despised or rebelled against.

 

 

There was a big improvement in Gerry, but the real struggle was not
between Baudaker, Fletcher and Gerry: it was between Baudaker, Fletcher
and Sheila.

 

 

Whenever Baudaker got into his car, Fletcher took over in sheer
self-defense. But after three or four days he happened on one occasion
to be too deep in himself to be reached, and Baudaker had to drive.
Surprisingly, he drove excellently until he suddenly braked wildly
on a sharp bend and went into a skid he couldn't handle.

 

 

Fletcher took command as they were about to fly off the road down a gully
and be killed. At least, Baudaker would have been killed. Fletcher would
no doubt have found a new haven.

 

 

He corrected the skid and, put the car back on course.

 

 

--You were doing all right until then, he told Baudaker.

 

 

--Yes. I did as you did. You'd taught me. I knew how.

 

 

--Then what went wrong?

 

 

--I lost confidence. I thought "This can't be me," and tried to stop. I
panicked.

 

 

--Don't do that again. You don't have to. You're a good driver.

 

 

"Me?" said Baudaker incredulously.

 

 

--Yes.

 

 

--Fletcher, we've got to investigate this, find out what you and I can
do, what I can do alone, what . . .

 

 

--No tests, said Fletcher coldly. To change the subject he asked
--Where are we going, anyway?

 

 

--To a place Paula loved.

 

 

With the answer came more: every week Baudaker drove to a place in the
country where he could feel near to Paula, the cottage, now a ruin,
where she was born.

 

 

Again, despite Baudaker's reticence, Fletcher knew he could probe and
dispel the mystery of Paula's death thirteen years ago. But he felt that
was entirely Baudaker's affair, not his.

 

 

He walled himself off and did not even see where Baudaker went. And on
the drive back Baudaker did not summon him.

 

 

 

 

Fletcher and Ross were both linguists. Baudaker, more or less uneducated,
had always longed to be able to read psychological papers in foreign
languages: Ebbinghaus, "Ober das Gedächtnis," 1885; Wundt, "Grundriss der
Psychologie," 1896; Richard, "La psychologie et les problčmes psychique
et moraux," 1946; Helmholtz, Burzlaff, Katz, Henning.

 

 

At last he could. Although Fletcher had lost almost all his French and
German vocabulary again, it returned very easily. Baudaker could look at
an old German textbook and the sense of the long, strange, alien words
leaped up at him. It seemed he could never have failed to understand
something which was so obvious, that language was no barrier, only a
veil to be brushed aside.

 

 

The discovery that Baudaker was no longer a doormat puzzled some of the
university staff members, was resented by others, and made most of them
more friendly.

 

 

The chief technician left, his deputy moved up, and Baudaker became
deputy. This seemed natural, indeed inevitable. However, Baudaker was
humbly grateful to Fletcher for the long-delayed recognition. He was
certain, and he had good reason for his certainty, that without Fletcher's
intervention he would have been passed over, as usual.

 

 

Professor Williams, at first very cool to the new Baudaker, gradually
thawed and took to consulting him in a way which Baudaker found very
flattering.

 

 

And the junior technicians, who had been wont to regard him as a doddering
old fool and insult him openly, began to be polite and tried to please him.

 

 

The new chief technician, Sam Connor, was the only one who seemed to have
less regard for Baudaker than before and treated him with less than common
civility. Baudaker was worried and hurt by this, but Fletcher told him:
--He knows that he only became chief by the skin of his teeth instead
of you. He's younger than you. Williams always turns to you, not
him. Suddenly he's insecure. He'd be glad if you were dead.

 

 

This made Baudaker very uneasy. He didn't mind being stiffened by Fletcher,
but two things bothered him: the loss of Sam Connor's friendship and the
careless unconcern which Fletcher compelled him to show Gerry.

 

 

--Gerry's nearly eighteen, Fletcher told him.
--It's too late to fight his battles for him. You've got to shove him
out of the nest.

 

 

--But we're hard on him. I know it seems to be working. Don't you think
that now it is working, we could start going easy . . . just a little bit?

 

 

--Rome wasn't built in a day. What you mustn't be with Gerry is soft. He
despised you for being soft. Start being soft with him again and he'd
snap right back to what he was.

 

 

Baudaker agreed reluctantly.

 

 

 

 

Anita not only believed now what she had once found incredible, she
perceived for herself Fletcher was now part of Baudaker before he gave
any hint of it.

 

 

Although there was little contact between her and Baudaker, they spent
several hours each day in the same building, and met in a corridor nearly
every day. As this happened late one afternoon, she stopped and said:
"Mr. Baudaker, if you're not in too much of a hurry, would you drive
me home?"

 

 

"Certainly, Miss Somerset." There was nothing strange in this; he passed
the end of her street and had several times given her a lift when they
happened to leave the building together.

 

 

Before the car was out of the grounds, she said: "I thought so."

 

 

"You thought what, Miss Somerset?"

 

 

"You never used to be able to drive like that, Mr. Baudaker. In fact,
you can't now, can you?"

 

 

"But it's me who's doing the driving!" Baudaker said, quite hurt.

 

 

She laughed. "Anyway, you've given me my answer. It wasn't really
necessary."

 

 

"How did you know?"

 

 

"Well, I know you're not with Ross any more. And when someone starts
acting as he never acted before . . . Of course, others couldn't possibly
guess the truth, it's so fantastic. But I had the clues. Judy is going
to a school in Northumberland, by the way."

 

 

"Northumberland? Why?"

 

 

"It's not an ordinary school. I happened to read about it a few months
ago, and remembered it when we were all wondering what to do about
her. She's no genius, by the way. Her IQ's only 120."

 

 

"Only!"

 

 

Anita laughed. "Yes, that's remarkable enough, since she was on record as
having a tentative IQ of 75, estimated because rating is always difficult
at that level. The school in Northumberland is experimental. It's for
children whose intelligence is greater than their attainment. Some have
been removed from bad home backgrounds, some have had long illnesses,
only a few are psychiatric cases."

 

 

"You think that'll be good for Judy?~

 

 

"I think it's the best available compromise. She can't be put with
ordinary teenagers, not yet, anyway. She shouldn't be treated as a
disturbed personality. There's no niche anywhere for her. The nearest
I could find was this place where kids who're lost years through a long
series of operations, say, are given a chance to catch up."

 

 

"What do they know about her at the school?"

 

 

"That she was rated IQ 75 and now turns out to be 120. Naturally they'll
think somebody made a shocking blunder over the kid. Well, what would you
tell them?"

 

 

"What do you think of her?"

 

 

Anita hesitated. "Ifs hard and perhaps pointless to form any conclusions
about Judy just now. Remember, she's been turned upside-down and
inside-out. She was one thing, and now she's another. Her life to date
has no meaning or value to her now. Her mother is bewildered -- pleased,
but bewildered -- and she has no friends. You rejected her."

 

 

"Nonsense, I . . . "

 

 

"You couldn't get out of her fast enough. If that had happened to me,
I think I'd have understood. I don't want any man barging about in my
mind like a bull. But Judy didn't see it the same way."

 

 

"Did she tell you?"

 

 

"She didn't have to tell me," said Anita scornfully. "And this is
my corner."

 

 

He stopped the car and she opened the door.

 

 

"Wait, Anita . . . "

 

 

She turned to look thoughtfully at him. "That's quite a useful signal,"
she said. "You call me Anita, Ross calls me Maiden and Baudaker calls
me Miss Somerset. No, I don't think I'll wait. I've said all I really
wanted to say. Good-bye, both of you."

 

 

Ross knew too. He came to see Baudaker in his office, and after beating
about the bush for a minute or two, said abruptly: "Fletcher, I want
you to know I'm very glad that what happened did happen."

 

 

Fletcher nodded, unsurprised.

 

 

Ross went on: "I had good reason to be sorry for myself, I thought,
but the truth is there's no good reason to be sorry for yourself. I
thought I'd tell you that, because it applies to you too."

 

 

"I know it," said Fletcher quietly.

 

 

"And to Baudaker," said Ross.

 

 

"Yes."

 

 

"What you gave me I honestly don't know. Frankly, I'd have thought, and
you'll probably admit, that on the face of it John Fletcher had nothing
whatever to give me. But Judy, according to you, had serenity when she
had nothing much else. Happiness, if you like. Perhaps I got some of it."

 

 

Since Fletcher said nothing, he did not pursue this.

 

 

"I wish to God Anita would realize I'm not the bastard I was."

 

 

"She does."

 

 

"But she still keeps me at the end of her bargepole."

 

 

"You can hardly blame her, can you?"

 

 

"Fletcher, I've got to have that girl!"

 

 

"Perhaps," said Fletcher, wryly savoring his own infinite wisdom, "when
you start thinking of her as more than something you've got to have, you
might begin to have a chance."

 

 

It was after Ross had gone that Baudaker said suddenly and very definitely
--Now we must investigate your background.