The Good Apprentice Read Online Free

loved her opportune pirate whom, she said, she always pictured swarming on board with a cutlass between his teeth. No hand-to-hand combat had been necessary however, since Jesse had certainly abandoned Chloe, and did not later on show any interest in his casual offspring. It was Jesse’s long-suffering wife May who had, on two or three occasions, asked Chloe to bring Edward, aged five or six, over to see his father when the Baltrams were staying in London. They had already by this time left Chelsea for the country. On these visits Chloe, who had never forgiven her faithless lover and perhaps was still in love with him, left Edward at the door to confront alone the big dark-haired man who looked at him with amused curiosity, the nervously effusive stepmother, and two staring overtly hostile little girls. Harry stayed away from these encounters of which he disapproved, and which after Chloe’s early death (Edward was seven) were not repeated. May Baltram later sent two or three Christmas cards to Edward which Harry intercepted and destroyed. That was the end of a matter about which Edward retained remarkably little memory in the motherless years during which he so took for granted Harry as father and Stuart as brother. He could not recall his mother at all clearly, he remembered mainly her large sad eyes as the wasting illness took her away, and his own feeling of a terrible sadness, and a kind of guilt which he had imbibed from the sense of a tension between her and Harry, as if perhaps her reproaches, addressed to those who would survive her, were falling upon him too. Later, as he became more aware of the oddity of his parentage, he protectively clouded her image. A little extra ‘family’ was provided for Edward by Chloe’s younger sister ‘Midge’, a fashion model, once the smartest woman in London, who amazed everyone by marrying an ‘older man’, Thomas McCaskerville.
    The panelled drawing room of Harry Cuno’s house, which had been his parents’ and his grandparents’ house, was a long room on the first floor with windows at each end. It was painted, had been painted long ago and had pleasantly aged and faded, a darkish green, now made sombre again by an afternoon mist outside. One lamp was on. A fire was burning in the grate. Harry was a large blond broad-faced fresh-complexioned man, his thick lively hair, skilfully cut, which had only lately faded a little from being ‘golden’, standing up in a crown above his unlined brow. He had cordial blue eyes which looked with inquisitive friendliness about him. Sitting by the fire, he was leaning forward now with his elbows on his knees. Edward, tall and thin and dark, with a hawk nose and limp dark straight hair which flopped across his face, a little taller than his stepfather, cringed back into his shabby boxlike armchair. Harry’s words did not, could not, reach him, had no connection with his sufferings, did not concern him in the least. He was having an imaginary conversation with Mark. ‘Look, Mark, it was her talking about my family that delayed me …’
    Harry thought, I’ve got to do something. We’ve let him rest, stay in bed, wander about, be by himself, he seemed to prefer that, but he’s fading away, he’s like a dying animal. If only there was something he wanted. ‘Why don’t you go on holiday? Go with anybody you like, go with a girl. I’ll fix it all. Go to Venice. You were talking about going to Venice.’
    Edward, his gaze fixed on the corner of the room, slowly shook his head. The double-glazed windows admitted faint traffic noise, at the other end gave glimpses of close misty trees.
    ‘Has Thomas said anything, arranged for you to see him again?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Curse him, why doesn’t he do something? He’s got some idea in his head. He’s so devious. This leaving you alone is no good. You will come to dinner tonight?’ The McCaskervilles had invited Harry and Edward and Stuart to dinner.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘It’s for you, you