The Apprentices

by Leon Garfield

  “You liked it,” answered Tom Titmarsh steadily. “That’s why I did it.”

  “Christ!” said Miss Sparrow, dabbing her eyes on her apron. “Why did you ever bother with me? Was it for me looks?”

  “No, miss.”

  “The name,” said Miss Sparrow, biting her lip and not exactly knowing what to feel, “is Cleopatra.”

  “And I’m not surprised,” said Titmarsh, who had perceived in the inky devil a fascination that glowed like fire in a dark place.

  She smiled contentedly, and a perfume of printer’s ink assailed Titmarsh, so that, for ever after, it was always in his memory as being sweeter than roses.

  He picked up the book she’d let fall. He opened it but did not look inside.

  “Thine Is the Kingdom,” he mused, and gazed into the devil’s eyes.

  “No . . . no,” murmured Tom Titmarsh’s devil. “For better and for worse, it’s ours.”

  THE FILTHY BEAST

  HALF PAST FIVE of a warm August morning and the town was bright and still. A profound silence inhabited the valleys between the buildings, and the rooftops locked in sleep. Here and there steeples pointed upward like sharpened fingers: “Ssh!”

  Suddenly something moved. Horribly high up, across the frontage of Martlet and Peabody, silk mercers, a small figure floated magically upon the air, and a whisper drifted down into the neighbourhood of Amen Corner.

  “With a one! And a two!

  And a one! And a two!”

  It was not the wandering angel of the City, nor even the drifting spirit of the town; it was Shag, walking his narrow plank as if it were as wide and safe as the Strand.

  Arms outstretched and jerking his hips and knees like a cockerel, Shag strutted along what, in the early light, looked to be no more than a darkened strip of nothing. It was a queer, breathless, and private sight.

  “With a one! And a two!

  And a one! And a two!”

  He came to the eastern extremity of his perch and nodded familiarly to the dome of St. Paul’s, which rose into the sky with a huge, dim shine, as if it were still wet from the sunken tide of the night; then, pivoting deftly on heel and toe, Shag flapped his stumpy arms and proceeded westward with an elegance not to be denied.

  “With a one! And a two . . .”

  He snapped his head from side to side, staring alternately at the filthy peeling wall of Martlet and Peabody and over Smithfield way, where, among the sea of tumbled roofs, slept the tattered giant of Bartholomew Fair. He grinned in confident expectation and continued on his secret dance to the marvellous morning.

  “With a one! And a two!

  And a—”

  He halted. He was being watched. A scowl darkened his face, and he congealed into his well-known imitation of a gargoyle.

  A thin grey cat had crept out onto a neighbouring roof and was staring at him. With infinite caution Shag reached down into the pocket of his apron and drew out a bottle of ale.

  “Puss, puss!” he muttered benevolently, and taking a deep swig, projected his mouthful across the gap between the buildings in a pursed-up jet of immense force.

  He missed the cat—which hissed and departed—but was rewarded by a startled shriek from below.

  “You dirty beast up there!”

  Gleefully Shag skipped along the tottery plank until he was able to peer down into the valley of the shadow and triumph over his chance victim.

  “You dirty beast dahn there!” he mimicked, and a spattered kitchen maid in her shift, who had nipped out into the alley for private reasons, shook her fist and vanished in an angry flurry of grey and pink.

  Shag beamed and remained brooding over the silent valley, thinking his gargoyle thoughts . . . which were not so much thoughts as sensations that inhabited Shag’s head.

  Presently his patience was rewarded. Out of the blind end of the alley there came swinging and looping a bent, ragged figure on three legs—two of iron-tipped wood and one of dirty flesh and bone.

  It was Creeping Jesus, out and about early to occupy the best begging pitch in Smithfield and, if necessary, defend it to the death against all his mutilated rivals, chief of whom was Tom-in-the-Pot, who had one leg less than Creeping Jesus himself.

  Shag cried out shrilly and, as the cripple looked up, gave his well-known imitation of a lad about to fall from the scaffolding. Creeping Jesus shouted in alarm and, in his haste to avoid injury from the plummeting boy, caught his crutches in the cobbles and went arse over stump in the dirt.

  “You stinkin’ beast up there!” he howled, and Shag grinned down on his second victim of the day.

  Shag watched with interest as Creeping Jesus cursed and writhed and struggled to regain his human posture; then he capered along the plank until he came to a window and rapped smartly on the glass.

  “Get away from there, you dirty little beast!” came a shriek from within, as a female, tousled from sleep, lifted her head from her pillow and beheld Shag peering malevolently in.

  At once Shag gave his well-known imitation of mortal panic and vanished from human sight. The female, thinking he’d slipped and gone to his death on the ground beneath, rushed to the window—and up popped Shag’s face to frighten the wits out of her with its mixture of suddenness and diabolical delight.

  Nobody knew why Shag did these things, least of all Shag himself. They gave him pleasure, and that was reason enough. He was made that way, and if it was really God who made him (as He’s supposed to have a hand in all of us), then someone must have jogged His elbow while He was at it.

  At six o’clock Shag, keeping a sharp lookout on the quickening street below, caught sight of his master, Mr. Howie, striding along and looking up. Hastily Shag gave his well-known imitation of an apprentice who has been hard at work since half past five. He slapped a brushful of biscuit-coloured paint across the face of Martlet and Peabody, wiped his brow—and rested.

  Mr. Howie, who had been an apprentice himself, was not taken in. He knew that Shag was a lazy, idle good-for-nothing; the only reason he put up with him was because Shag, though he lacked every human virtue, had a good head.

  This had nothing to do with the appearance of Shag’s head, which was dull and brutish, nor did it refer to what was inside it, which was meagre and chiefly bad; it meant that Shag had a good head for heights.

  In his time, Mr. Howie had lost two apprentices to the perilous trade of house painting: bright lads who’d fallen, like doomed angels, from the tops of houses to the hard ground beneath. They had been better workers than Shag, but, thought Mr. Howie as he stared up at the little monster in his employment, there was no doubt that an apprentice still on the scaffolding was worth a sight more than two in the grave.

  He shouted up that he’d be back in half an hour and would expect to see some progress, and Shag shouted back that, as God was his witness, he’d already been working so hard that his eyes were nearly falling out.

  Mr. Howie called him a bleeding little liar and went off to a job of interior painting in Paternoster Row. Shag began slapping paint energetically in all directions over Martlet and Peabody’s, and hoped that the force of gravity would spread it before his master returned. This took him until a quarter to seven, when Mr. Howie, in a white apron and paper hat, came back and had the rare good fortune to catch his apprentice actually at work.

  “Good lad!” he shouted, in pleased surprise, and Shag took another rest.

  At seven o’clock exactly, Shag was disturbed by a loud scraping and banging from below. Inquisitively he peered down to the front of the shop and saw, bobbing and bowing, the top of the well-brushed head of Piper, the silk mercer’s apprentice, who had stepped out to take the shutters down.

  Now Piper was exceptionally smart in a green coat and brown breeches with knee buckles like tin daisies. Piper was the good, industrious apprentice, the real angel of Amen Corner, who came at customers like an anxious butterfly.

  “Can I help you, ma’am? Allow me . . . oh, allow me!”

  Pip
er opened carriage doors as if they were jewel caskets, and handed out the rustling, perfumed contents with a courtesy that had to be seen to be believed.

  “Careful, ma’am . . . careful! I just washed down the pavement and it’s still a bit wet!”

  Nothing was too much trouble for Piper, who wanted to get on in the world. He was on the go from seven till seven, and walked so airily that it was a marvel he’d not been blown down the end of Warwick Lane.

  Thoughtfully Shag loaded his brush and, taking exquisite aim, let fall a gobbet of paint. He missed Piper by no more than an inch, but the paint splashing on the pavement spattered Piper’s striped stockings.

  “You filthy beast up there!” shrieked Piper, and skipped inside the shop for turpentine and a rag to repair the damage.

  This was the only communication between the two apprentices, who were divided by five and forty feet of air and united by the Law of Gravity alone. Shag dropped—and Piper suffered. Shag danced with pleasure—and Piper danced with rage. To Shag, Piper was no more than the top of a head, created by Providence, for aiming at; to Piper, Shag was no more than a pair of patched boots above which lurked the spirit of the devil.

  Piper, who went to church on Sunday, had come to have strange, heretical thoughts. He believed that the world was upside down and that hell was really in the sky. Everything pointed that way. Did not all goodness, nourishment, and beauty come up out of the soil, while filth, beer swill, cheese rinds, and disfiguring, biscuit-coloured paint rained down on him ceaselessly from on high?

  Since the coming of Shag, Piper, who took a virtuous pride in his appearance, had fairly reeked of turpentine, and, though he drenched himself with a strong floral scent bought from Chambers of Portugal Street, he succeeded in smelling not so much like flowers as a painting of them.

  Shag also smelled like a painting—but not of flowers. Shag smelled like a painting of half-eaten apples, old cheese, and fish. Unlike Piper, Shag did not go to church unless Mr. Howie sent him there to paint something; consequently, he had no thoughts of God or the devil, heretical or otherwise. He liked the sun and feared the slippery rain, and took no other interest in the sky. After all, you couldn’t drop things upwards. So Shag also found heaven below, by way of dropping things on Piper’s well-brushed head.

  And there it was again! The industrious apprentice’s head had bobbed into view as Piper set about sweeping the pavement in front of the shop.

  Shag rubbed his hands together and, poking out his tongue for greater concentration, bided his relentless time. Piper bobbed and dodged until at last, overcome by honourable weariness and the heat, he rested on his broom. And paid a frightful penalty. A pint of dirty water came down like a bomb and exploded on his bright green sleeve.

  Shag heard the angels singing, and he clapped his hands in triumph and joy; Piper screamed and rushed back inside the shop.

  His coat—his best coat! The filthy beast had ruined it! He knew he never ought to have put it on till evening, but the sun had been shining and he’d felt so happy. . . .

  He stumbled past bales of flowered satin and rosy tiffany like a broken greenfly. He was weeping with pain and rage.

  “Please, God, strike him down!” wept Piper. “Smash him all over the ground!”

  He leaned against his master’s soft, expensive merchandise and soaked a corner with his tears till, hearing sounds from upstairs, he swallowed down his sobs and pulled himself together.

  He wouldn’t let that swine aloft destroy him as if he were no more than an ant. It wasn’t fair—it wasn’t fair!

  He hung up his coat to dry, and by the time Mr. Martlet came downstairs, he was once more in command of himself. He was the industrious apprentice, willing and eager, forever carrying bales of taffeta and watered tabby from the storeroom to the window space and laying them down as if they were Infant Christs; he was at everyone’s beck and call and waited on his master and mistress with a devotion that bordered on the holy.

  “Piper, do this! Piper, fetch that! Piper, the window! Piper, the door!”

  “Oh, yes, sir! Directly, ma’am! No trouble at all!”

  He who pays the piper calls the tune was a saying most deeply engraved on the virtuous apprentice’s heart.

  Outside, in the hot sun, the other apprentice, Shag, sat on his high place, gnawing an apple and swinging his legs, and waiting on the reappearance of Piper’s well-brushed head, of whose complicated contents he’d neither a thought nor a care in the world. Sometimes he amused himself by daubing rude pictures as far across the frontage of Martlet and Peabody as he could reach; sometimes he’d just sit and stare and pick his nose till he’d catch sight of Mr. Howie, striding along and looking up. Then he’d work like a demon to render his enormous, biscuit-coloured bosoms and bottoms unrecognizable to his master’s suspicious eye. All the rest of mankind worked hard to be noticed for it; Shag only worked hard when he didn’t want to be noticed.

  Down below, at the other end of gravity, honest Piper continued to work his fingers to the bone and his soul to ashes in his efforts to please. He darted in and out of the shop, opening carriage doors, bowing and scraping and dancing attendance, and pausing only to wipe the sweat from his brow. He carried huge bundles, he cleaned up after pet dogs, he swallowed down insults and lapped up contempt, and, in general, he spread his spirit on the floor for customers to walk upon. There was a lady who trod on his finger as he was rubbing a paint spot from the hem of her gown. He smiled and begged her pardon for causing an inconvenience.

  Perhaps somewhere in the wide world other worms might turn, but here, in Amen Corner, the silkworm—never!

  So Piper endured all that life, and Shag, could drop upon him, and he turned the other cheek so often that even Father Time—unchristian though he was—took pity on him and at last, at long last, struck seven o’clock.

  Piper’s day was done. After he’d put up the shutters, swept and tidied the shop, stacked the tumbled bales in the storeroom, and danced a last attendance on his master and mistress, he was free. Free!

  “And where are you off to, Piper, in such a hurry?”

  “To the Fair, sir! To Bartholomew Fair!”

  All day he’d been longing for it with a passion that no one would have suspected. Sometimes he’d felt terrified and sometimes exalted to the skies at the thought of what the Fair might bring. A thousand times during the day he’d drawn back—only to be pricked on, in the very next moment, into a wilder, fiercer resolve. What was his secret? It was too deep for words; even in the looking-glass, he hid it under a dangerous, silky smile.

  “The Fair again, Piper? But you went yesterday, and the day before.”

  “Yes, sir. So I did.”

  “I would have thought you’d been often enough, Piper.”

  Piper said nothing; the only answer he could have made lay far too deep for words.

  “Take care of yourself, Piper. Keep out of mischief.”

  “Yes, Mr. Martlet, sir,” said Piper, and found himself thinking, unaccountably, of lions tearing him apart and wild bears paddling in his vitals. “I’ll take good care.”

  But he knew he would do no such thing. All his day’s waverings were at an end. He was now fixed so firmly on his course that not even death could have stopped him; his disconnected soul would have gone marching, pale and eager, to the Fair.

  White as a sheet, he put on his stained green coat and left the shop with an airy skip that contained the ghost of a stumble.

  Outside, a sudden dread of something unspeakable falling on his head and ruining him beyond all hope caused him to halt. He winced and looked up. Shag’s plank was empty and the scaffolding was bare. It really seemed as if God had put the devil to flight and come into His own.

  Piper breathed again and whispered to himself, “The Lord is my shepherd!” and went on towards the Fair.

  Giltspur Street was in an uproar; from earliest morning it had been an impassable battleground of barrows, stalls, beggars, and children as savage as wolves. A can
non might have cleared a path, but Piper was unarmed, so he had no choice but to step aside and go into the alleys that led, a long way roundabout, to Cow Lane and the Fair.

  These alleys were steep and narrow, and the evening sun turned them into dark cracks down which the sounds of the Fair echoed like lost laughter and music in a shell. Piper hastened, for suddenly he was alone and sorely afraid.

  A swarm of Bridewell boys—those turbulent charity apprentices all in penitential blue—had watched him daintily avoid the crowds. They’d taken it as an insult and had followed him into the alleys. At first they’d crept in a menacing silence, but now they began to mock and mimic him, dancing devilishly in his wake and greeting each turn of his dead white face with fists that would have squashed his nose and shattered his teeth.

  Please, please, God! screamed Piper in his heart. Smash ’em! Smash ’em down into pieces with Thy strong right hand!

  Even as he gave his prayer silent words, a parish constable, huge and full of beer, came out of a court, and the Bridewell boys scattered like puffs of dirty smoke.

  The Lord is my shepherd! thought Piper, with immense relief. I do believe He really is!

  The colour came back into his cheeks and the skip into his step as he hurried on to the Fair. At last he came out by the sheep pens, and there before him stretched the furious, shrieking heart of Bartholomew Fair.

  All the world filled up the open space and threatened to boil over, and the hot sun, acting on hanging meat and old sausages, provided a rich, heavy stink that wobbled the exhausted air.

  Everything seemed to be shaking and trembling, like those glimpses of a gaudy heaven—the real heaven—he’d sometimes caught sight of on the other side of his father’s eyes. The very screams and shouts were no more than pictures of shouts, hung up like an exhibition of dreams.

  “Walk up! Walk up! See the transparent child!”

  “Nuts and damsons! Golden pig and honey!”

  “Walk up! Walk up! See the Resurrected Man! See the mare with five legs!”