Gerry suddenly abandoned defiance and pleaded. "Look, Dad, I only got fifteen bob from Sheila. I've got to have money, or I can't go out."
"Then it looks as if you'll have to stay in."
Gerry released a stream of profanity and abuse and then, suddenly silent, took a step forward.
"I'll take it," said Gerry wildly. "Your wallet's in your breast pocket."
"Gerry!" said Fletcher warningly. Curiously, although neither he nor Baudaker knew anything about fighting, and abhorred such violence, he was totally unafraid. He understood for the first time the courage of mothers and old women in the face of violence.
"I'm going to belt you one," said Gerry viciously.
Fletcher sensed the weakening. The next thing would be a stream of oaths, a paean of self-incitement.
"Congratulations again," said Fletcher. "In anticipation."
Goaded, Gerry swung a murderous blow. But Fletcher diverted his arm and hit out carefully, coolly.
Gerry crashed back against the wall and slid to the floor.
--Well, well, observed Fletcher, ignoring Baudaker's frantic desire to see if the glassy-eyed youth was all right.
--Evidently we owe something to Ross. Neither of us could have done that. And it needed doing.
It did need doing. From then on Gerry was sullen but otherwise less antisocial. He bore no grudge: if you told someone you were going to hit him and rob him, and he hit you, you had no comeback. Sometimes, not out of fear, because he would never fear Baudaker though he had learned a certain caution, he made small, tentative advances to which Baudaker wanted to respond overwhelmingly. Fletcher didn't let him. Love and license had failed with Gerry; it had to be love tempered with a certain paternal authority which Baudaker had never imposed.
It was strange that Fletcher could help him to exert this, since Fletcher had less paternal experience than Baudaker, but what he had learned from Judy and from Ross gave him an idea of the kind of control young people reluctantly accepted and the kind they despised or rebelled against.
There was a big improvement in Gerry, but the real struggle was not between Baudaker, Fletcher and Gerry: it was between Baudaker, Fletcher and Sheila.
Whenever Baudaker got into his car, Fletcher took over in sheer self-defense. But after three or four days he happened on one occasion to be too deep in himself to be reached, and Baudaker had to drive. Surprisingly, he drove excellently until he suddenly braked wildly on a sharp bend and went into a skid he couldn't handle.
Fletcher took command as they were about to fly off the road down a gully and be killed. At least, Baudaker would have been killed. Fletcher would no doubt have found a new haven.
He corrected the skid and, put the car back on course.
--You were doing all right until then, he told Baudaker.
--Yes. I did as you did. You'd taught me. I knew how.
--Then what went wrong?
--I lost confidence. I thought "This can't be me," and tried to stop. I panicked.
--Don't do that again. You don't have to. You're a good driver.
"Me?" said Baudaker incredulously.
--Yes.
--Fletcher, we've got to investigate this, find out what you and I can do, what I can do alone, what . . .
--No tests, said Fletcher coldly. To change the subject he asked --Where are we going, anyway?
--To a place Paula loved.
With the answer came more: every week Baudaker drove to a place in the country where he could feel near to Paula, the cottage, now a ruin, where she was born.
Again, despite Baudaker's reticence, Fletcher knew he could probe and dispel the mystery of Paula's death thirteen years ago. But he felt that was entirely Baudaker's affair, not his.
He walled himself off and did not even see where Baudaker went. And on the drive back Baudaker did not summon him.
Fletcher and Ross were both linguists. Baudaker, more or less uneducated, had always longed to be able to read psychological papers in foreign languages: Ebbinghaus, "Ober das Gedächtnis," 1885; Wundt, "Grundriss der Psychologie," 1896; Richard, "La psychologie et les problčmes psychique et moraux," 1946; Helmholtz, Burzlaff, Katz, Henning.
At last he could. Although Fletcher had lost almost all his French and German vocabulary again, it returned very easily. Baudaker could look at an old German textbook and the sense of the long, strange, alien words leaped up at him. It seemed he could never have failed to understand something which was so obvious, that language was no barrier, only a veil to be brushed aside.
The discovery that Baudaker was no longer a doormat puzzled some of the university staff members, was resented by others, and made most of them more friendly.
The chief technician left, his deputy moved up, and Baudaker became deputy. This seemed natural, indeed inevitable. However, Baudaker was humbly grateful to Fletcher for the long-delayed recognition. He was certain, and he had good reason for his certainty, that without Fletcher's intervention he would have been passed over, as usual.
Professor Williams, at first very cool to the new Baudaker, gradually thawed and took to consulting him in a way which Baudaker found very flattering.
And the junior technicians, who had been wont to regard him as a doddering old fool and insult him openly, began to be polite and tried to please him.
The new chief technician, Sam Connor, was the only one who seemed to have less regard for Baudaker than before and treated him with less than common civility. Baudaker was worried and hurt by this, but Fletcher told him: --He knows that he only became chief by the skin of his teeth instead of you. He's younger than you. Williams always turns to you, not him. Suddenly he's insecure. He'd be glad if you were dead.
This made Baudaker very uneasy. He didn't mind being stiffened by Fletcher, but two things bothered him: the loss of Sam Connor's friendship and the careless unconcern which Fletcher compelled him to show Gerry.
--Gerry's nearly eighteen, Fletcher told him. --It's too late to fight his battles for him. You've got to shove him out of the nest.
--But we're hard on him. I know it seems to be working. Don't you think that now it is working, we could start going easy . . . just a little bit?
--Rome wasn't built in a day. What you mustn't be with Gerry is soft. He despised you for being soft. Start being soft with him again and he'd snap right back to what he was.
Baudaker agreed reluctantly.
Anita not only believed now what she had once found incredible, she perceived for herself Fletcher was now part of Baudaker before he gave any hint of it.
Although there was little contact between her and Baudaker, they spent several hours each day in the same building, and met in a corridor nearly every day. As this happened late one afternoon, she stopped and said: "Mr. Baudaker, if you're not in too much of a hurry, would you drive me home?"
"Certainly, Miss Somerset." There was nothing strange in this; he passed the end of her street and had several times given her a lift when they happened to leave the building together.
Before the car was out of the grounds, she said: "I thought so."
"You thought what, Miss Somerset?"
"You never used to be able to drive like that, Mr. Baudaker. In fact, you can't now, can you?"
"But it's me who's doing the driving!" Baudaker said, quite hurt.
She laughed. "Anyway, you've given me my answer. It wasn't really necessary."
"How did you know?"
"Well, I know you're not with Ross any more. And when someone starts acting as he never acted before . . . Of course, others couldn't possibly guess the truth, it's so fantastic. But I had the clues. Judy is going to a school in Northumberland, by the way."
"Northumberland? Why?"
"It's not an ordinary school. I happened to read about it a few months ago, and remembered it when we were all wondering what to do about her. She's no genius, by the way. Her IQ's only 120."
"Only!"
Anita laughed. "Yes, that's remarkable enough, since she was
on record as having a tentative IQ of 75, estimated because rating is always difficult at that level. The school in Northumberland is experimental. It's for children whose intelligence is greater than their attainment. Some have been removed from bad home backgrounds, some have had long illnesses, only a few are psychiatric cases."
"You think that'll be good for Judy?~
"I think it's the best available compromise. She can't be put with ordinary teenagers, not yet, anyway. She shouldn't be treated as a disturbed personality. There's no niche anywhere for her. The nearest I could find was this place where kids who're lost years through a long series of operations, say, are given a chance to catch up."
"What do they know about her at the school?"
"That she was rated IQ 75 and now turns out to be 120. Naturally they'll think somebody made a shocking blunder over the kid. Well, what would you tell them?"
"What do you think of her?"
Anita hesitated. "Ifs hard and perhaps pointless to form any conclusions about Judy just now. Remember, she's been turned upside-down and inside-out. She was one thing, and now she's another. Her life to date has no meaning or value to her now. Her mother is bewildered -- pleased, but bewildered -- and she has no friends. You rejected her."
"Nonsense, I . . . "
"You couldn't get out of her fast enough. If that had happened to me, I think I'd have understood. I don't want any man barging about in my mind like a bull. But Judy didn't see it the same way."
"Did she tell you?"
"She didn't have to tell me," said Anita scornfully. "And this is my corner."
He stopped the car and she opened the door.
"Wait, Anita . . . "
She turned to look thoughtfully at him. "That's quite a useful signal," she said. "You call me Anita, Ross calls me Maiden and Baudaker calls me Miss Somerset. No, I don't think I'll wait. I've said all I really wanted to say. Good-bye, both of you."
Ross knew too. He came to see Baudaker in his office, and after beating about the bush for a minute or two, said abruptly: "Fletcher, I want you to know I'm very glad that what happened did happen."
Fletcher nodded, unsurprised.
Ross went on: "I had good reason to be sorry for myself, I thought, but the truth is there's no good reason to be sorry for yourself. I thought I'd tell you that, because it applies to you too."
"I know it," said Fletcher quietly.
"And to Baudaker," said Ross.
"Yes."
"What you gave me I honestly don't know. Frankly, I'd have thought, and you'll probably admit, that on the face of it John Fletcher had nothing whatever to give me. But Judy, according to you, had serenity when she had nothing much else. Happiness, if you like. Perhaps I got some of it."
Since Fletcher said nothing, he did not pursue this.
"I wish to God Anita would realize I'm not the bastard I was."
"She does."
"But she still keeps me at the end of her bargepole."
"You can hardly blame her, can you?"
"Fletcher, I've got to have that girl!"
"Perhaps," said Fletcher, wryly savoring his own infinite wisdom, "when you start thinking of her as more than something you've got to have, you might begin to have a chance."
It was after Ross had gone that Baudaker said suddenly and very definitely --Now we must investigate your background.
--We must?
--There is a purpose. There is an aim, an end. It wasn't just an accident that you became Judy, then Ross, then me.
--It wasn't even an accident that I died.
--Then you agree?
--I flatly refuse to let you try to test what's left of me.
--That's not what I want to do.
--What do you want to do, then?
--Go to Edinburgh.
The suggestion came as a complete surprise to Fletcher. --What on earth for?
--To trace your background. You know virtually nothing about it.
--I remember nearly everything about it. The university, before that the schools, before that the Homes . . .
--And then nothing. You know nothing of your parents. Nothing before you were about four years old. That's strange. I'm older than you, and I remember quite a lot that happened before I was four.
--I've told you about that. However this thing works, I'm not allowed to take all the memories of John Fletcher with me. What I remember is like a photograph of a photograph of a photograph.
Baudaker said firmly --I believe that even as John Fletcher you knew little or nothing of your very early life. So now we're going to find out about it.
--You make the decisions for us both now? asked Fletcher drily.
--You'll do this. You don't want to be probed. You don't want tests. But you'll do this.
He was right, Fletcher realized, amazed at Baudaker's new perspicacity. Rather than be examined, tested, weighed in the balance and found wanting, he found himself quite prepared to make an ordinary inquiry into the origins of John Fletcher, who scarcely existed yet could not die.
Baudaker arranged to take a week off with no difficulty whatever. Indeed, it was practically arranged for him. Rather crossly Sam Connor said if Baudaker didn't hurry up and take his spring week soon, it would interfere with the summer holiday arrangements, and Baudaker said at once: "All right, I'll take next week."
For a moment Connor, who was never friendly toward Baudaker these days, was on the point of protesting that this wouldn't be convenient, but realized in time he would make himself look ridiculous.
--That's a remarkable coincidence, said Baudaker later.
--You think so? Don't you know coincidences buzz round me like flies?
--No, you've never told me about that.
--The day before I died I just happened to run into Gerry and Sheila. That was no coincidence at all, because I didn't know them. But I'd just phoned you, and that night I saw Gerry leaving the department as I arrived. Coincidence? It's nothing. The next day I tried to put myself in the exact spot where a piece of masonry was going to fall. And a little later I happened to lean on a gate which was unfastened for the first time ever. Coincidence? When Judy and I chose to walk along a balcony at night, the particular place we happened to choose was where about twelve adjoining tenants all happened to be out for the evening. Coincidence? When Ross wanted to speak to Anita privately, he took her to a tennis locker room, and in a building crammed with students of both sexes he found a completely private place. Coincidence? Well, only a small one.
--What you're saying is you can control your environment.
--Oh, no. Don't start thinking again I'm a superman. No, I simply sense things, I suppose. I was going to be involved with you again: I went where your son was. I half wanted to kill myself: I tried to put myself where I should be killed instantly, and at the third try, succeeded. A quiet piece of balcony was necessary: I went to where the conditions I wanted existed. I wanted to speak to Anita: I took her where I knew nobody else would be. Quite small miracles really, hardly worth mentioning.
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