The Good Apprentice Read Online Free Page B

pretending to read it. He had refused a drink. The room, Midge’s taste, for Thomas was unconscious of his surroundings, was brilliant with flowers, upon the curtains, upon the wallpaper, upon the oriental carpet, even in plaster wreaths upon the ceiling, as well as serenely and more ephemerally present in jugs and vases. Yet each flower knew its place, and the tall stiff brigades of yellow-eyed narcissi, whose perfume filled the room, did not put the discreet little wallpaper roses in any way out of countenance. Upon the walls here and there, stemming the floral tide, were airy views of Berkshire by Midge’s (and Chloe’s) deceased father, Cleve Warriston, a minor painter and follower of Paul Nash. Many lamps lit the still expectant scene. Willy Brightwalton, who loved Midge, was helping her in the kitchen. Ursula and Stuart, the remaining guests, had not yet arrived.
    Harry and Thomas stood by the fireplace upon an art deco rug embroidered with tulips. Primroses from Midge and Thomas’s country cottage crowded upon the mantelpiece. Outside, the east wind prowled, rattling the windows. The curtains were securely drawn. Harry and Thomas, standing close to each other, were conscious of a familiar beam of ambiguous emotion occasioned by proximity. They had known each other for a long time. Harry took a step back. He was dandyish in his bow tie, his broad calm fine-complexioned face (‘milk and roses’ as Chloe used to say), newly shaved, glowing with health. Thomas, whose ancestors were Jacobites and Rabbis, was thin, with a narrow dog-like jaw and cool blue eyes and a square-cut fringe of wiry light grey hair, and thick robust rectangular glasses which he was rarely seen without.
    ‘Why not?’ said Harry.
    ‘The patient must minister to himself.’
    ‘Yes, yes, of course, call yourself a mediator, an enabler of the gods, what you like, but can’t you do something?’ Harry was by now so used to feeling that Edward did not hear what he said that he spoke as if the boy were absent.
    The door bell rang.
    ‘Midge will go,’ said Thomas in his high fastidious Edinburgh voice. A woman’s tones were heard. ‘That’s Ursula. Stuart will come?’
    ‘He said he would, so he will.’
    ‘What’s the latest?’
    ‘He wants to be a probation officer!’
    Stuart Cuno, four years older than Edward, had lately startled his family and friends by refusing to continue his education. Established as a graduate student with distinguished honours in mathematics, offered a coveted teaching post at a London college, he had announced that he was leaving the academic world in order to do ‘social work’.
    ‘Well, why not?’ said Thomas. ‘But what is it?’
    ‘Well, you should know, no mother, a neurotic stepmother, a father who preferred his brother — ’
    ‘I don’t mean that — ’
    ‘However well Stuart did, Edward was always the star, he was the charmer, he was the one they noticed — ’
    ‘I mean, what’s his idea?’
    ‘Some religious sect must have brainwashed him or something -’
    ‘Why shouldn’t he break out and help his fellow-men?’
    ‘It’s not just that, it’s his attitude, he’ll be barefoot in a brown robe next. If it were political I wouldn’t mind so much — ’
    ‘It’s not political?’
    ‘Only vaguely, like helping the under-privileged.’
    ‘Some mathematicians just lose their drive at that age.’
    ‘He was clearing out of maths anyway. He was doing some logic and philosophy stuff for his doctorate, something on Boole and Frege. I thought he was loving it.’
    Harry felt something cold touching his hand. He looked down and saw that it was a bowl of olives held by Meredith McCaskerville. Meredith was Thomas and Midge’s son aged thirteen. Meredith had straight fairish brownish hair like his mother, which he wore combed down in neat lines to his collar, and with a fringe like his‘father. Tonight he was jacketed and wearing a tie. He was a straightbacked dignified laconic boy. He