The Pupil Read Online Free Page A

unseemly promptitude, and Judith was left without even the wherewithal to salvage the semi-detached lifestyle to which she had formerly aspired, and which she had so recently rejected (on Charles Cross’s recommendation) as bourgeois and contemptible. No sweet daily routine for her of
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, trips to the shops with the Silver Cross pram, ironing, hoovering, baking and darning, making and mending. While her husband was disporting himself on an East Anglian campus (from which he dropped out after three terms), she was left in a pair of rented rooms with a new baby and only the scantest of support from her own unsympathetic family.
    Some months after the baby was born, its father, in a fit of sentimentality, visited Judith in her two-room flat,bringing with him as a present five ounces of Lebanese Gold, which they smoked together. He persuaded Judith to name the baby Anthony, and not Kevin. He visited regularly after that, bringing money now and then, and three years later, Judith found herself pregnant once again.
    When Charles Cross (or Chay, as he had taken to calling himself) subsequently heard that his ex-wife had begun proceedings against him to obtain maintenance payments for baby Anthony (and, presumably, for the new baby), he refused to have anything to do with the new child, let alone interfere in the choice of name for it. As a result, the unfortunate child was christened Barry.
    Judith stumbled on through life. After a few years she resumed her studies and eventually obtained, with the help of her relenting but ever-grumbling mother, who looked after the children while she studied, a teaching qualification. Bewilderment still lived in her eyes, but she had not entirely abandoned the dreams and hopes of her youth. She invested much ambition in her two sons, and watched with surprise and delight Anthony’s careful, brilliant academic progress. It seemed to her that he was destined to travel on roads where she could not possibly follow; she was immensely proud of him.
    Barry – Barry was not the kind of child in whom one could absorb one’s lost hopes. At eighteen, with none of his brother’s dark charm and intellectual ability, he was a laconic, large youth with an irrepressible sense of humour, quite devoid of any ambitions or cares. He attended a local sixth-form college, where he supposedly studied for A-levels. No one, least of all Barry, seriously hoped hewould obtain any. He and Anthony regarded one another with an affectionate tolerance.
    When Anthony returned that morning with his carrier-bagful of lemons, the house was empty, his mother at work and Barry at college. The silence and the rainy morning light filling the kitchen gave Anthony a dreary sense of futility. The day stretched ahead of him, life stretched ahead of him, both unfilled. He made himself a cup of tea and went through to the sitting room to fetch his book. It was then he saw the letter lying on the hall table, addressed to himself. He picked it up. It was postmarked EC4. It was probably, he knew, a polite rejection from any one of the sets of chambers to which he had applied for pupillage. But still his heart raced as he tore open the envelope. He read and re-read Michael Gibbon’s letter, as though unable to comprehend its contents. Excited beyond words, he paced round the empty house, longing for someone to return so that he could tell them. Caper Court! The best, the very best! Why had they chosen him? Well, they had, there it was. The man Gibbon and he had got on well, but he had never dared to hope … Suddenly the unfilled day was possessed of brilliance, life seemed full and promising. With a pupillage like that, he told himself, one could do anything. If one worked hard enough – and hadn’t he always worked hard? – then the pupillage might turn into a tenancy, and there was the future, clear and assured. To fly with the gods and angels of 5 Caper Court. The arduous slog at school, at university, at Bar School