The Apprentices

by Leon Garfield

  Before he could answer, she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Light you ’ome, young lovers?” came the sudden cry of a linkboy as he loitered past. Gully turned, his eyes streaming from the torch’s smoke. The flame and the lamplighter’s daughter seemed to be composed of the same destructive substance.

  “’Ome?” he mumbled, shaking his head. “’Ome?”

  “I won’t be no trouble,” said Miss LaSalle anxiously. “Really I won’t. I’ll do whatever you say and I won’t put a foot wrong.”

  “Feet!” groaned Gully, thinking of the shame that gnawed at his soul. “Christ! All them . . . feet and—and ’IM.”

  That night, after he’d got back to Mr. Noades’s and sprawled somehow onto his bed under the counter, Gully had a horrible dream. He dreamed that he’d given away the buckles he’d bought for Mothering Sunday and that he was going to take Miss LaSalle to the evil-smelling cobbler’s shop in Labour-in-Vain Yard. Furthermore, he dreamed that he was actually walking along Shoemaker’s Row with her on his arm and that he was stark naked.

  He awoke with a terrible cry and it was morning and he was safe in his bed and not on the open street at all. For a moment he felt a great flood of relief . . . and then he remembered that the nightmare lay, not behind him, but ahead. True, he wouldn’t be walking down Shoemaker’s Row stark naked, but there were worse things than that. The nakedness of the spirit was more shameful by far than the nakedness of the body. The thought of the exposure that lay ahead caused him to shrink into his bedclothes and wish he’d never been born.

  All that morning he prayed with all his might that Miss LaSalle wouldn’t come, that she’d forgotten or that some accident would prevent her. But it was no use. At three o’clock in the afternoon she was waiting outside for him, her yellow cloak flapping and her eyes bright with hope.

  “Look,” she said. “I’m wearing your present!” She lifted up her skirts and displayed her feet, explaining that the buckles had been too heavy for her dress and had dragged it down. “So I put them on me shoes,” she went on, “and shortened me skirt so’s everyone can see.”

  Gully, who was always embarrassed by the sight of feet, turned away and entertained the pathetic hope that Miss LaSalle hadn’t meant what she’d said about losing her place and wanting to ask his ma for work. But she had meant it; in fact, she’d brought all her possessions done up in a neat bundle of brown paper, inscribed JANNER. TRIG LANE.

  “I’d nowhere to leave it,” she said, and squeezed Gully’s arm till he felt his fingers would drop off.

  “We’d best go along Carter Lane,” he said, taking the bundle as if he wanted a visible burden to balance the unseen one that was crushing him down. He felt cold and lonely and frightened.

  His friend, the clockmaker’s apprentice, who was leaning against the shutters of his master’s shop, waved and whistled as Gully and his girl passed by.

  “Have a good supper!” he called out. Gully managed a feeble snarl.

  “Oh, my!” said the clockmaker’s apprentice, with exaggerated deference. “We mustn’t talk to common ’prentices now we’re going a-mothering!”

  Gully’s face grew white. . . .

  “I suppose I should have brought some flowers or cakes for your ma,” murmured Miss LaSalle apologetically. “But I put on some scent specially.” She skipped round the other side, for the bundle had come between them. “D’you like it?”

  She put her head close to his; she smelled sweet and warm—like burnt sugar. Gully thought of the foul-smelling shop towards which they were walking, as straight as the flight of a crow. Hastily he turned off Carter Lane and, in an extraordinary mood of cunning and desperation, began to lead his girl through a maze of irrelevant little streets. He was hoping that either they’d lose themselves and not arrive at all, or that she’d be muddled into thinking that the distance between Shoemaker’s Row and Labour-in-Vain Yard was really terrific.

  “Why, we’re almost in Trig Lane!” exclaimed Miss LaSalle in surprise. “You never said your ma lived so close!”

  Labour-in-Vain Yard gaped in front of them; it was a melancholy pocket off Fish Hill, stuffed full of rubbish by the wild March winds and dirty passersby.

  “It’s reely,” said Gully defensively, “quite fashionable when the wind don’t blow.”

  He paused, as if giving Miss LaSalle a chance to change her mind and escape.

  “Shall I take me bundle now?” she asked. “Your ma won’t think it nice, your carrying it.”

  He shook his head, and he and his girl advanced timidly towards the cobbler’s shop. It looked meaner and more wretched than ever as it crouched down between its grimy neighbours as if they’d been beating it. And there was no mistaking it, either: GULLY was painted in large uneven letters across the parlour window.

  “It goes back a long way,” said Gully hopelessly, “be’ind. You’d be amazed ’ow spayshus it reely is . . . inside.”

  “Fancy having your name painted up like that!” said Miss LaSalle, and Gully couldn’t help feeling gratified by the sigh she gave. He glanced at her quickly. Sunlight, finding its way somehow into the Yard, seemed to be setting her red hair on fire. For a moment one pride gave way to another as Gully stood and admired his girl; then the door of the cobbler’s shop opened, and his ma was revealed.

  “Why, it’s Gully!” she said loudly. “And walkin’ in all this blowy wind! Why didn’t you come by ’ackney carridge, dear?”

  She’s got a visitor! thought Gully with a rush of relief. That means the workroom’ll be shut and ’e won’t be about! So we’ll all be able to be’ave natcheral.

  He gazed at his ma with approval. She’d done herself up quite grandly, with a great deal of embroidery and white edging, and she was wearing a smart little black cap she’d run up out of the silk hatband Gully had given her. In a way she reminded him of old Mrs. Noades’s funeral cake. . . .

  His eyes lingered on his ma’s, and a mysterious flicker of understanding passed between them, as if each were admitting to a loving conspiracy. . . . Then Mrs. Gully’s eyes fixed themselves upon her son’s female companion.

  “This is Miss LaSalle, Ma,” he said. “She’s in the silk an’ silver line, y’know.”

  “Come inside,” said Mrs. Gully, smiling. “I got company.”

  He saw at once that the workroom door was shut as tight as if it had been nailed and that there was not a boot or a shoe or anything to do with feet to be seen anywhere in the parlour. Even the visitor, who sat creaking in a corner chair that was closely guarded by the table, seemed to end up in nothing. . . .

  “This is Mrs. Joker,” said Mrs. Gully.

  “With a a,” said the new neighbour, creaking forward as much as the furniture allowed. “Joaker with a a.”

  She was an anxious, respectable-looking soul, with black beads and a battered silver brooch.

  “Mrs. Joaker used to live in ’Anover Square.”

  “Just orf it, reely. . . .”

  “You don’t say. This is Miss LaSalle.”

  “French?” inquired Mrs. Joaker learnedly.

  “’Er ma was a ’uge knot,” said Gully, smiling proudly at his ma.

  Mrs. Gully nodded. “Reely? I suppose ’er pa must ’ave been in a big way, too?”

  “In the oil an’ ladder business,” said Gully, avoiding the bright eyes of the lamplighter’s daughter.

  “Is that so? Mrs. Joaker ’ere was tellin’ me that she knew someone in the diamond line. . . .”

  “Well, only in a manner of speakin’,” said Mrs. Joaker awkwardly, and scraped her chair back against the wall.

  “Of course, Miss LaSalle ’ere is in silver. That’s right, I believe?”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am!” said Miss LaSalle, eager to be obliging and on a level with the company. “Look!” She held out her hands to show the thin black lines that marked her palms and that came from the constant passage of the noble metal.

  Mrs. Joaker inspected them with interest.

&n
bsp; “That lady I was tellin’ you of, yesterday, Mrs. G., used to wash ’er silver in winnygar.”

  “We—that is, Mr. Janner, always uses ’monia. But it makes you cry like anything.”

  “My son,” interposed Mrs. Gully, feeling that the two outsiders had conversed sufficiently between themselves, “won’t never bring me silver, just on account of that. The blackenin’, you know. It reely ’as to be gold. ’E won’t stand for nothing less. Ain’t that so, Gully?”

  Gully agreed. The feeling in the little parlour was remarkably pleasant. He smiled gratefully at his ma, and once again the secret flicker passed between them.

  “Gully never stints me,” she said. “And why should ’e, bein’ in the line ’e is?”

  Gully nodded earnestly. He was feeling cheerful and airy, almost as if he were dancing on a web. Everything was turning out far better than he’d hoped; even the sun was coming into the parlour as if it had been invited. It shone respectably through the sign-painted window and wrote GULLY in long black letters across the bread-and-butter-laden table and fixed a cake with a cherry on it in the fork of the Y.

  Gully chattered on about the grandeur of the Noades’s funeral and then about his visit to Janner’s, who, as everyone knew, was big in the gold and silver line. . . . He stole a glance at his girl; she shifted and blazed up suddenly in the sunlight. He felt momentarily uncomfortable and paused.

  “Them’s pretty buckles you’re wearin’, miss,” said Mrs. Joaker, who had been creaking sideways in her chair as if searching for some way, however unlikely, into the conversation.

  “Gully give them to me,” said Miss LaSalle proudly, and held up her feet as high as she could. “Look! They’re D’s. That’s for Daisy. It’s me name.”

  Gully’s discomfort increased. Something he’d pushed to the back of his mind nudged its way forwards.

  “That lady I was tellin’ you of,” went on Mrs. Joaker eagerly, “was called after a flower, too. Marguerite . . .”

  “My son’s always buyin’ presents,” said Mrs. Gully, silencing the new neighbour with a look. “Expense ’as never been a object with Gully. ’As it, dear?”

  She glanced coolly at Miss LaSalle’s exposed feet and then to the floor beside her son.

  “W-what was that, ma?”

  “I said you was always buyin’ presents.”

  Gully grew red. He had remembered what he’d tried to forget; and his ma had remembered, too. It was Mothering Sunday. After all his resolutions, he’d come empty handed and betrayed his ma and shamed her before Mrs. Joaker. . . .

  Mrs. Gully smiled encouragingly at her son. He avoided her eyes and stared bleakly at the floor.

  “Ah!” said Mrs. Gully, rising and coming towards him with a rattle of disturbed cups. “Did you think I’d forgot? Dear Gully! Look at ’im, blushin’ all over ’is face!” She kissed the air affectionately about an inch above his head. “Tried to ’ide it from me, didn’t you? Wanted me to think you’d forgot! But I saw it! I saw it as soon as you come in, dear . . . your present for Motherin’ Sunday! My son,” she said, turning to Mrs. Joaker, “never forgets them old customs. I wonder what ’e’s brung me this time?”

  “Ma!” cried Gully in sudden terror, but he was too late. Mrs. Gully had bent down and taken, from the floor beside him, the neat little bundle of Miss LaSalle’s possessions!

  Gully saw his girl’s hand reach out—then vanish like a flame extinguished. A sensation of fearful cold engulfed him, and he began to shiver violently. He thought he was going to have a seizure.

  “The lady I was tellin’ you of,” said Mrs. Joaker, eyeing the bundle with painful curiosity, “used to get buttons. Real pearl buttons. One every year . . .”

  “Buttons?” murmured Mrs. Gully, admiring the bundle before clearing a place and depositing it in the middle of the table. “Fancy that!”

  “But then,” said Mrs. Joaker, twisting and turning in her chair in order to examine the bundle from all sides, “she ’ad almost everything else. And buttons always comes in ’andy.”

  Gully and his girl sat in terror and stared at the bundle as if it were a severed head.

  “Janner. Trig Lane,” mouthed Gully, reading the inscription on the brown paper. For a moment he entertained the forlorn hope that the bundle might contain a quantity of nicked silver, but the glimpses he kept catching of Miss LaSalle showed a different sort of fear from guilt. In a strange way he felt she was frightened, not of his ma, but for her.

  “Shall I open it now, or after tea, dear?”

  “It—it—” began to plead Miss LaSalle, when suddenly the little parlour shook as in an earthquake and the tea things jumped in agitation.

  A loud, insistent hammering had begun from behind the closed door of the workroom. In Gully’s ears it sounded as grim and threatening as the fist of the angel of doom.

  “It’s ’im,” said Mrs. Gully, nodding towards the thin partition that divided the workroom from the parlour. “’E wants ’is tea.”

  She never referred to her journeyman by name, but always as he or him, and in tones of sombre mystery.

  The hammering ceased, and a silence fell upon the parlour. Everyone stared uncomfortably towards the closed door. Gully felt as if he were really going to faint. He put out his hands to hold onto the table. Already, in his mind’s eye, he could see the workroom door opening and the dark, brutish place within being exposed. He could see the ugly, ancient man who lurked there, spitting on his hands and, as usual, missing them and spattering his knees and the floor . . . the old, old man with his rheumy eyes, his boiled nose, and his hideous bunioned feet. Already the stink was in his nostrils. . . .

  “I’d ha’ thought,” he whispered miserably, “that it bein’ Sunday—”

  “You know what ’e is,” said Mrs. Gully malevolently. “But this time ’e’ll ’ave to wait!” She shouted out this last sentiment loudly enough for the journeyman to hear. “’E’ll ’ave to wait till we’ve ’ad our tea and I’ve opened me present what Gully’s brung me for Motherin’ Sunday!”

  She was answered by two bangs, denoting either impatience or assent.

  She ignored them and began, with elaborate courtesy, to offer round tea and cake. But no one—not even Mrs. Joaker—had any appetite. As usual, he had spoiled things, and it was impossible for conversation to return to its previous refined level; not with him grunting and shifting and banging about next door!

  There was no help for it but to do without tea and take everybody’s mind off him by opening up the present Gully had brought. Mrs. Gully stood up and cleared a space round the bundle.

  “It’s all right, dear,” she said as Miss LaSalle stretched out a trembling hand. “I can manage the knot meself.”

  “They used to come in little velvet boxes,” said Mrs. Joaker, dragging her chair until she was pressed tightly against the table.

  “What did?”

  “Them pearls I was tellin’ you of.”

  “Oh, them buttons.”

  “Well, they ’ad to be buttons, seein’ as ’ow she ’ad a pearl necklace what was give ’er by the gentleman.”

  “One button a year don’t seem much for a mother to get,” said Mrs. Gully, loosening the knot that secured the bundle. “At that rate she’d be in ’er grave before she ’ad any use of ’em. My Gully’s got a bit more pride than to bring ’is mother . . .”

  She pulled away the cord and let it fall. Miss LaSalle bent to pick it up—and remained half under the table. Gully could see her red hair smouldering near his feet.

  “It’s well done up,” said Mrs. Gully, delicately lifting up a torn shift and shaking it. “Whatever can it be, Gully dear?”

  She pulled out a filthy petticoat; Miss LaSalle’s dismissal had been too sudden for her to have time to wash her belongings before packing them.

  “Where is it, Gully?” asked his ma, coming upon a pair of stockings that were as thick with grime as they were thin with holes. She held them up and shook them in a puzzled kind of way, as i
f her gift might have been caught up in them. A singularly stale smell spread across the table.

  She found a bodice, frayed and stained with grease, and then other items of such humble and pitiful aspect that no one should have seen them, let alone held them up to a neighbour’s fascinated view.

  “They—they’re mine!” sobbed Miss LaSalle, lifting her face to the level of the table, so that Gully saw it was shining with tears of shame.

  “Reely?”

  Mrs. Gully had begun to gather the articles together. Blindly she included a plate. . . .

  “Ma!” moaned Gully.

  “Yes?” said Mrs. Gully, as if surprised that anyone in the present company should address her so familiarly.

  She had completed her packing up and was now grasping the bundle with hands in which the veins and sinews stood out like seams in leather.

  “Get out of ’ere,” she said quietly. “Get out.”

  Then, with a movement so unexpected in its rapidity, that Gully had no chance to defend himself, she flung the bundle in her son’s face.

  “Get out!” she screamed. “Get out—get out of my ’ouse!”

  Gully, half blinded by his girl’s ramshackle belongings, made a stupid, clumsy effort to save the plate.

  “But Ma—”

  “Don’t you dare to call me Ma!” shrieked Mrs. Gully, her fists clenched and her eyes blazing. “You proud little wiper, you!”

  “But me—”

  “Look at ’im standin’ there!” raged Mrs. Gully, and then, heedless of the onlookers, began to call upon the ceiling, it seemed, to witness the scorn and disgust, the vile ingratitude, and even the hatred that she saw, like running sores, in her son’s eyes.

  Gully shrank back as his ma’s words poured over him like a burning torrent. He actually felt them scald and sting. Fearfully he raised his hand. . . . “For Gawd’s sake, Ma—”