The Apprentices

by Leon Garfield

Even Rosy Starling, in spite of her caution and suspicions, couldn’t subdue a prickling of excitement as the morning crept on and more and more pairs of brisk young feet tapped on the cobbles and passed her by. Many paused briefly; perhaps they smiled? She couldn’t tell. . . .

  “But anyway, you’re too tall,” she said to herself. “And you’re too short for me! And as for you—why, you want to get them shoes mended and cleaned, too, I daresay, before you come courtin’ me!

  “Get a move on with you!” she cried aloud as a pair of feet shuffled and loitered longer than she liked, and she felt watchful eyes upon her. “Ain’t you never seen a blind lady eatin’ before?”

  “Sorry, miss . . . sorry.”

  Fiercely she smoothed down her skirt and tucked the hem into her shoe buckles so as not to display her ankles unwarily; then she made sure her little lace cap was pinned at a fetching tilt. . . .

  “Now where’s me last bit of bread gone?” She felt beside her. “Come on—who’s stole it?”

  “Sparrers, miss. Little thievin’ sparrers.”

  “Sauce!” said Rosy. “And me with me cages all shut up!”

  She laughed and, unlatching a cage, inserted her neat, white-gloved hand and fluttered her fingers temptingly.

  “Come along with you! Come inside me little Newgate for yer sins!”

  She heard folk chuckle, so she smiled and raised her face and silenced them with one look of her bricked-up eyes. Not that they were at all shocking or ugly—any more than the coloured stones children play with are shocking or ugly. . . .

  Presently the commotion round the maypole died away, and there was a noise of creaking and straining. This was followed by anxious shouts of “To me! To me!” and finally by a groaning of wood and an almighty thump that shook the very doorstep on which Rosy Starling sat.

  Everyone stamped and cheered, and Rosy Starling knew that the maypole was up. Carpenters’ hammers banged and children shrieked, while Rosy Starling, very ladylike, clapped her hands and called, “Well done!”

  She began to hum a tune Mrs. Berry was fond of, but of which she didn’t know the words.

  “La—la—la!” she chanted, gently nodding her head. “La—la—la!”

  “Bobby Shafto’s gone to sea,

  Silver buckles at his knee . . .”

  “Who’s that? Who’s singin’ me song?”

  “He’ll come back and marry me

  Bonny Bobby Shafto!”

  The voice faded and was soon lost in the general hubbub. It had been a light and airy tenor; Rosy judged the singer to have been young and perhaps three fingers taller than herself. His voice had trembled slightly, but there’d been so much noise going on that, with all her sharpness, Rosy Starling had been unable to tell for sure if it had been a tremble of laughter or villainy.

  She bent her head low and continued listening, trying with all her might to unravel the tangled skeins of sound, for she hated a mystery. Impatiently she waved off neighbors and street traders who kept wishing her good morning and asking after Mrs. Berry; they distracted her and broke up her patterns. But it was no use; the voice had gone.

  Little by little the air grew warmer and full of the sensation of real sunshine; it seemed to clothe her and hold her in a soft, enormous hand. She wriggled her shoulders luxuriantly. She could smell onions and veal pies and the brown nutty sting of strong ale. The food stalls were opening for business.

  She sniffed harder and made out oranges and new bread, and—and there was another smell that she couldn’t quite put a name to; it was a most curious and haunting smell that seemed to be made up of opposites: rosewater and vinegar, and with something of chestnuts, too. It was quite near. . . .

  “Bobby Shafto’s bright and fair

  Combing down his yellow hair . . .”

  “So it’s you!” said Rosy Starling. “Come back again and smellin’ like an old bathhouse!”

  “Good morning, miss.”

  “Any fool can see that!” answered Rosy coldly, and averted her face. The voice had been too shaky by half and, more than ever, Rosy Starling suspected a villain.

  “Mind if I sit down next to you, miss?”

  “Suit yourself,” said Rosy Starling offhandedly. “It ain’t my doorstep.”

  She shrank aside as she felt the air disturbed and waves of the curious smell coming over her. She heard clothing creak and rustle and she heard the clink of metal on metal. Could he be a soldier, with flashing eyes and teeth and wearing his sword? One and all they were villains, Mrs. Berry said; break your heart and leave you as soon as spit! So just you watch out, my girl. . . .

  “You’re—you’re as pretty as a picture,” he murmured in her ear.

  Rosy Starling nodded and, smiling, turned to show him her stone-dead eyes.

  All the dainty colours and tinsel ribbons of the little May Day fair spun and jostled past the doorstep like torn-up wedding paper as the apprentice, Turtle, shivered and stared into the bewitching face that framed the cold, milky-marble eyes.

  “What are you gawpin’ at? Ain’t you never seen a blind lady before?”

  He grew as cold as ice, then as hot as fire. The sudden look, which was not a look at all, had unnerved him. He felt frightened and guilty, and, as he continued to look at her, he was seized by an uncanny sensation that the blind bird-cage seller was watching him from some invisible vantage point inside her head.

  Rosy Starling shrugged her shoulders and turned her back with a rush of her marvellous reddish gold hair. She was divided between fear and fascination; Mrs. Berry’s warnings shouted urgently in her head, but the tales of May Day dukes also whispered in her heart. He was still there and watching her; she could feel his eyes, like fingers, touching her hair. . . .

  The apprentice was indeed staring at the blind girl’s hair; he couldn’t keep his eyes off it. Since he’d come into Little Drury Lane, he’d been absorbed by it. He’d measured it in his mind from crown to tip; he’d weighed it and graded it and coveted it as a madman covets a sunbeam. It was the very perfection of his trade, and his soul ached to possess it. He was a hair merchant’s apprentice on the lookout for stock.

  He worked a little way to the north, for Mr. Delilah of Martlet Alley. Delilah was not, of course, his master’s real name; it had been bestowed on him in recognition of his skill in charming the hair from the heads of the canniest milkmaids and barmaids as far afield as Birmingham, and selling it to wig makers for Hanover Square: Delilah being generally considered the chief practitioner and patron saint of the trade. It was his way to lay his victims low with compliments and port wine before begging a lock of their hair as a keepsake; after which, as he put it, he’d crop ’em closer than a nag’s tail.

  But even a Mr. Delilah must grow old; the merchant’s eyes were dulled and his amorous chatter had a weary ring. So he’d taken unto himself an apprentice—one Turtle, by name.

  Patiently he’d trained him up in the business. He taught him how to grade hair according to shade, weight, and fineness. He showed him how to comb it with a hackle and rid it of nits and the eggs of lice by passing it between thin needles and then washing it in weak vinegar; and he expounded the mysteries of steaming curls in a saucepan and dyeing them with green chestnuts, logwood, and alum.

  “But first you need to lay your hands on it,” he’d say, smiling at his apprentice as a thousand soft and curly memories floated through his mind. “And hair that’s worth the getting takes a sight more than a pair of sharp scissors and a shilling! Yes, it takes charm, my boy.”

  Here Turtle, who’d been assured by his ma and aunts that he possessed charm enough to fetch the birds out of the trees, would look earnestly and admiringly at his master as if he’d never seen anything, in all his born days, as charming as Mr. Delilah. How was it possible? How did he do it?

  “It’s my eyes, my boy. It’s all in the eyes,” said Mr. Delilah modestly. “When I lays in a compliment, I keeps my eyes on the lass. Like this.” He stared with eyes somewhat moist and squinting at
his respectful assistant. “You see? There’s a language in eyes. It’s a language that every lass understands.”

  Turtle, who possessed the brightest and most speaking eyes his ma and aunts swore they’d ever seen, nodded in wonder; and Mr. Delilah, much gratified by his apprentice’s attitude, gave him the day off to go down to Little Drury Lane on May Day with five shillings and a pair of scissors.

  “There’ll be lasses by the dozen,” he said, “with new-washed heads and on the lookout for husbands. Use your eyes, my boy, and fetch me back a head of hair fit for a duchess!”

  “Cat got your tongue?” said Rosy Starling to the silent, scented presence beside her.

  The apprentice Turtle, of the speaking eyes and amazing charm, blushed and tried to prevent the scissors and shillings from clinking together and betraying him. How in God’s name was it possible to charm a lass when, for all she knew, he might have been as ugly as a toad? Of course, he could ask her outright to sell him her hair, and that would be an end of it. But what if she refused? Turtle was in a quandary. . . .

  “If you can’t talk,” said Rosy Starling, sniffing out an advantage and longing to use it, “why don’t you sing again?” She began to plait her hair into an ingenious golden rope down which the sunshine raced. “Go on! Where did Bobby Shafto go and what did he do after he combed his yellow hair?”

  “I—I don’t know any more of that song,” said Turtle awkwardly. He was beginning to wish he’d never sat down on the doorstep. There was no doubt that the blind girl, with her lack of admiration for his good looks, undermined his confidence grievously.

  “Then sing the first part again,” said Rosy Starling.

  “Not here, sitting on the doorstep in the street! Folk would stare like anything!”

  “Then shut your eyes and come into the dark with me!” said Rosy sharply. “If that’s all eyes can do for you, you’d best go home and put them out with a poker!”

  Turtle shivered.

  “Well?”

  Turtle began to sing very softly:

  “Bobby Shafto’s gone to sea,

  Silver buckles at his knee . . .”

  “Louder! Louder!”

  “He’ll come back and marry me,

  Bonny Bobby Shafto!”

  Some grinning idiot—whom Turtle could cheerfully have strangled—threw him a bent penny, and an urchin loudly offered to stand in for the blushing bride’s father and give Turtle away when Mr. Shafto should present himself, while another, less generously and more shrilly, opined that Mr. Shafto was well out of it and unlikely to return.

  Rosy Starling turned her face away and smiled maliciously. Idly she unravelled her hair, shook out the bends and folds left by the close plaiting, and began to weave it up again, her cottonwhite fingers making airy incantations over the gold, as if she were bending sunbeams. . . .

  He’d stopped singing. Someone was coming. . . .

  “Buy the pretty lady a watch, then she’ll never be late for lovers’ meeting! Buy a watch, young sir, or a pretty brooch?”

  It was some ancient dirty peddler. She could smell him; she wrinkled her nose.

  “Ah! Here’s the very thing! A real Spanish comb for that lovely hair!”

  Turtle scowled at the old peddler, who, with his tall black hat and long blue coat, seemed like some devilish wizard bent on betraying him. How could he buy the girl a comb when he was dead set on cropping her closer than a nag’s tail? He shook his head violently.

  “Or a pretty Liverpool watch?” pleaded the old villain, dragging forward a thin, lame boy who carried his box of wares.

  “You’re wastin’ your time, mister,” murmured a woman who’d paused to stare. “A watch wouldn’t be much use to her. She’s blind.”

  “Oy—oy—oy! What a shame!”

  Turtle looked gratefully at the woman and waved the old man away; but he, feeling he’d gone to some trouble in displaying his wares, wasn’t so easily got rid of.

  “Look at this, young sir! I can see you’re a young man with kindness in your heart. Buy her this! It’ll make her happy and it’ll feel so good round her neck. Believe me, young lady, it’ll suit you a treat. Just try it. The young man here wants to buy you something. I can tell by the way he’s looking at you. Here! Feel the quality! Better than gold, on my life and soul!”

  The old wretch winked at Turtle and offered a cheap brass chain such as might have secured a Bible in a country church.

  Rosy Starling stretched out her hand. She was both confused and delighted. Did he really want to buy her something, or had it been just peddler’s patter? She took the chain and nervously held it up against her neck.

  “Pretty as a picture, my dear,” said the old man. “Like a duchess, by my life!”

  “No!” said Turtle suddenly—and Rosy’s heart sank. “That silver one. Let her have that!”

  It turned out to cost three shillings, which was a fortune to Turtle. He paid for it with shaking hands, and wondered why. Brass would have done as well as silver for her. She’d never have known the difference. . . .

  “That first one,” said Rosy Starling softly. “It wasn’t as good as this one, was it?” She played with the cool silver necklace and pushed back her hair to display it better.

  “How did you know?”

  “It was the way you said, ‘Let her have that,’” answered Rosy.

  She smiled wisely, and Turtle became suddenly afraid of the uncanny girl with her power of dark sight that could spy into the farthest corner of his heart. He tried to fix his mind on her hair, which was, after all, what he really wanted; he must beg a lock of it as a keepsake. . . .

  “I like silver,” murmured Rosy Starling. “It’s the moon, ain’t it?”

  “No, not really,” said Turtle, somewhat puzzled. “The moon’s more white, if you know what I mean. . . .”

  “Of course I know! But white’s clean and cold. White’s nothing at all!”

  “Black is nothing—”

  “That’s what you think!” Rosy Starling laughed, shutting her eyelids and letting Turtle imagine for himself the richness of her dark. “What colour are your eyes?”

  “Grey.”

  “Grey? But that’s old and sad. Grey’s dusty and dead.”

  “I’m not old!” said Turtle indignantly. His eyes were his best feature, even if she couldn’t see them. “And I’m not dusty, either.”

  “But sad? Are you sad?”

  Turtle thought hard; he smiled and shook his head.

  “No . . . no . . . I’m not sad.”

  Rosy Starling laughed again.

  “Then you must be yellow, like Bobby Shafto’s hair! That’s sunshine and daffodils. What colour are you wearing?”

  “A blue coat, with brass buttons . . .”

  “Blue’s sleep, and the sky.”

  “But there’s clouds in the sky,” said Turtle, his voice darkening as he stared at the blind girl’s hair, which she’d woven and plaited into a sparkling prison of sunlight. She raised her hand to it, and Turtle was put in mind of when he’d first spied her at a distance, fluttering her white fingers inside one of her cages to tempt the birds.

  “For that matter, there’s dreams in sleep,” said Rosy Starling, sensing her companion’s uneasiness and longing to use her powers to dispel it. “I dream a lot, you know.”

  “What can you—what do you dream about?”

  “Oh, trees and rivers, and meadows and rainbows and sunshine on the sea!”

  “But you’ve never seen them! How do you know?”

  “And how do you know about—about what’s inside?”

  “It—it’s dark, isn’t it?”

  “No! No it isn’t! It’s light! It’s as bright as day all the time! It’s full of—of green smiles and brown sighs, and silver voices and golden laughter! It’s full of shapes, like cats and donkeys, and little things with wings—not birds, but more like children that smell of lilac and orange!”

  She paused with a look of blind triumph and pride, as if cha
llenging Turtle, with all his grey eyes, to put forward anything half so rich and fine.

  “You smell a bit orange,” she said.

  “It—it’s my trade,” said Turtle quickly.

  “Sellin’ oranges?”

  “No. I’m an apprentice. I—I work in a shop in Martlet Alley.”

  Rosy smiled ruefully; in spite of everything, she had rather hoped for something more in the way of a duke.

  “And there was me thinkin’ you might have been a soldier,” she said at length.

  “Would you have liked me better?” said Turtle, wishing, at that moment, that he’d been apprenticed to any trade other than that of buying hair.

  “No. If you’d really been a soldier, you’d have been in red, and that’s a colour I hate.”

  “Why?”

  “Red’s for pain. Red’s pricked fingers and scrapes and wounds. I’m glad I can’t see it.”

  “But there’s more than that! The setting sun is red—”

  “I know—I know! Bleedin’ all over the sky!”

  “But red’s the colour of—of lips and—and the colour of love!”

  “Gold’s the colour of love,” said Rosy Starling obstinately, and began to play yet again with her reddish gold hair. Her fingers encountered the necklace she’d been given. “Or maybe silver,” she added, with a quick, mischievous smile.

  Turtle felt a rush of pleasure that drove tears into his eyes. He turned away and stared foolishly at the painted maypole and the lively crowd that jigged and jostled about it. Any moment now the sweeps would be coming out of the dark alley for their grand dance, and all the busy little fair would explode like the bursting buds of May.

  He caught sight of a girl he knew being chased in and out of the throng by a most determined lover. He’d catch her all right; he was as quick as a flea. Now they were going round the maypole. She’d put on a tremendous burst of speed, and her green and yellow ribbons were fairly flying. She was the faster, and the distance between the pursuer and his girl stretched out; but at the same time, as they raced round and round, that other distance, between the girl and her pursuer, diminished as the pair of them both won and lost the race. Who had been chasing whom?