Charlie’s Apprentice

Five

John Gower bet himself she’d say something by the third crossroad and lost, because they’d gone through the frustration of hay-hauling tractors and school-pool Volvos and were five miles up the motorway towards London before Marcia finally spluttered and broke into laughter. ‘I just couldn’t believe it!’

‘She’s old-fashioned!’ Gower said, defensively. He didn’t really think of his mother as old-fashioned. Not old at all.

‘It was like something out of a Noel Coward play, creeping from bedroom to bedroom!’ Marcia protested.

‘I’m sorry.’

Marcia Leyton felt reassuringly for his hand. ‘I’m just playing with you! It was a wonderful weekend. And I like her …’ There was a pause. ‘Do you think she liked me?’

Gower accelerated past a crocodile of lorries and said: ‘I know she did.’ It had been the first time his mother had met Marcia: he wasn’t sure which of the three of them had been more anxious.

‘You don’t sound convinced,’ Marcia said, wanting more.

‘I am,’ said Gower, honestly. ‘She loved you.’ He coasted into the cruising lane, looking across at her. They had the sun-roof open: a stray flick of blonde hair had escaped from beneath her headscarf but was blowing backwards so she wasn’t bothering to restrain it. Her face, devoid of make-up, shone in the morning light: she wasn’t looking back but staring straight ahead, so that he could see her sharp, nose-tilted profile. He guessed many girls – probably all girls – with such perfect features would have intentionally sat as she was sitting now, displaying themselves for admiration. But not Marcia. She was the most exquisitely beautiful girl he had ever known, but someone completely and ingenuously unaware of it. He found it difficult to believe she loved him as much as she said she did; it was like stealing, taking something that didn’t belong to him by right.

His weekend for meeting her parents had been a month before, and much more difficult than the one just past, even though he and Marcia had not stayed in the family house because it had too few bedrooms: Marcia’s much younger, electronically crazed brother lived in one computer cave and her father’s bed-ridden sister was regally suspended in the other spare room in a miasma of disinfectant and lavender perfume. Marcia’s father, a retired bank inspector, had spent most of the time trying to initiate a debate about the intricacies of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism and European monetary union. The mother had baked a cake with nuts in it and Gower didn’t like nuts. He was worried his ignorance of finance and small appetite at tea had been misunderstood as lack of interest.

‘I don’t expect to be back from Manchester until Wednesday,’ announced Marcia. She was a visual display director for an advertising agency, which involved a lot of travelling, particularly to exhibitions.

‘I’ve no idea what this new course is about,’ he said in return. ‘I’ll probably be busy: certainly until it settles down.’ Closer to London the motorway was becoming more congested and Gower wished he had given himself more time to get ahead of the rush hour: he hated being late for appointments, especially first-time encounters.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said, slowly. ‘Don’t you think it’s stupid, us living like we do …’ She squeezed his hand again, in further reassurance, and said quickly: ‘OK! I’m not getting heavy. I am not sure I want the absolute commitment of marriage, either. I’m talking simple practicality. Keeping two separate flats is bloody mad: if I’m not out of town, like I’m going to be the next few days, we’re with each other all the time. There’s no point in living apart, is there?’

The traffic was getting heavier: Gower could see it at a standstill, far ahead. ‘I suppose not,’ he agreed, reluctantly, suspecting she had steered their conversation. Gower was frightened of their being permanently, more constantly together, although for none of the normal reasons that might make a person apprehensive of a stable relationship. His statutory inability to discuss his job with her would inevitably create a gap between them. And he didn’t want anything between them. The paradox was that he wanted to be with her all the time, probably surer of their relationship than she was.

‘That was begrudging,’ she said, disappointed.

‘Look at the bloody traffic!’

‘We’ve got all the time in the world,’ she said, truthfully. ‘And we’re not discussing the traffic. We’re discussing living together because it might be nice. At least I am. If you don’t want to, why not say so?’

‘You know I want to.’

‘Fine!’ she said, a person of quick decisions. ‘So let’s do it! Whose place? Mine or yours? I think yours is more convenient but my flat is in a better area. My lease has some time to run …’

‘Wait a moment!’ halted Gower. ‘Where’s the panic?’

‘Where’s the reason for delaying?’

‘I’m still going through courses: you know I’m starting one today.’

‘You’re already in the Foreign Office. There’s job security, carved in stone, for the rest of your life. Why should a course affect our living together?’

‘I’m not sure,’ he said, unhappy at not finding more convincing avoidance.

‘I think I know what you’re not sure about.’

He finally had to stop. Ahead the road was clogged as far as he could see. They had only just passed the airport turn-off, so he estimated he had at least another eight miles of jammed motorway. ‘That’s not so.’

‘Let’s forget it.’ She was staring straight ahead again.

‘Why have we got to make a decision now, in the middle of a bloody traffic jam? Let’s talk about it when you get back from Manchester.’

‘What’s there to talk about, apart from whose flat it’s going to be?’

‘You trying to make a row?’ They rarely argued: he couldn’t remember the last time.

‘No.’

‘We’ll sort it out when you get back,’ he insisted. He was glad the traffic began to move. He could at last see the reason for the blockage, a single-line crawl past three cars in a nose-to-tail accident, each driver blaming the other in a hard-shoulder shouting match: beyond the cars were moving fast again.

‘Is this the last course there’ll be?’ asked Marcia, trying for neutral ground.

‘I think so,’ said Gower, uncomfortably. He’d been schooled for conversations like this, actually lectured on the responses and convenient answers.

‘Then something permanent?’

‘That’s the procedure.’

‘I would have thought by now you’d have been given some indication of what it will be.’

‘Probably something in administration.’ Always dismissive, he remembered, from the how-to-reply lecture. ‘It’ll give me time to look around and make my mind up about a definite division.’

They left the motorway and Gower turned through the Chiswick back streets to avoid any more main road crawl: he was taking her directly to the station for the Manchester train.

‘I’m ambitious for you,’ she declared.

‘I’m ambitious for myself And nervous, he privately admitted. Despite all the exhausive training and tuition and one-to-one lectures, just as it had been with his tutor at Oxford, Gower couldn’t visualize what it was really going to be like. He’d actually mentioned it to his last instructor, seeking some guidance. Instead the man had nodded in quick agreement and said it wasn’t a profession for which there was any sensible, practical apprenticeship.

‘I’ll phone tonight,’ promised Marcia, as they stopped at the station. She leaned back in through the door, intending to collect her cases from the rear seat. ‘Best of luck with the course.’

Gower kissed her and said: ‘You’re wrong: you know you’re wrong, don’t you?’

‘About what?’ She knew, but wanted him openly to commit himself, to make her the clear winner of the dispute.

‘Me not being sure. About us. I’ve never been more sure of anything. I love you.’

It only took him half an hour to reach the headquarters building in Westminster Bridge Road and the boxlike fifth-floor office. ‘Good morning, sir,’ he said, politely, as he entered. ‘Gower. John Gower.’

Charlie Muffin wondered if being called ‘sir’ would be the only tangible benefit of his new job. ‘Your first mistake,’ he said.

It was so unusual for a foreigner to travel hard-seat – the lowest, cheapest class on Chinese trains, on wooden benches without upholstery and which did not convert into sleeping bunks – that Snow attracted even more attention than he might normally have done, simply by being a waiguoren, a foreigner. Snow attracted attention not merely by being a foreigner. He was an unnaturally tall 6" 5†, a spindly-limbed man whose long-ago purchased chain-store clothes never seemed to fit but to hang upon him, too short at the legs and arms.

From experience he didn’t try to force any conversation, waiting for the other travellers to practise their English upon him, which several did, from the moment he left Beijing. Again from experience, he let the talk range at the whim of those who approached him, never asking a direct question. Always, however, he quickly disclosed his ability to speak Mandarin, to avoid offending anyone into thinking he was trying to be superior or eavesdrop on the birdlike chatter fluttering around him. Before the first overnight disembarkation he thought two passengers – a young girl student from Shanghai and a middle-aged man who said he was a doctor – were going openly to criticize the government, but although he encouraged further conversation neither, ultimately, did so.

On that third day he saw on its way northwards a long convoy of army trucks carrying soldiers along a road parallel to the railway track. The trucks looked new and not of Chinese manufacture. In such crowded, unknown surroundings – unsure of informers among his fellow passengers – Snow held back from taking photographs. He counted a total of forty-seven lorries.

Later that same day the train stopped for water almost directly opposite a series of camouflaged but obviously newly erected factory buildings. On that occasion, pretending to photograph the steam-skirted railway engine in the foreground, Snow managed three exposures.

He was going to be very restricted, accompanied by an escort: possibly unable to achieve anything worthwhile at all. But already he felt he had enough to justify the journey. So London were going to be very impressed. The self-judgement stayed in his mind. If they were impressed – which they really couldn’t fail to be – he’d be in a position to seek favours: make demands even. So he would protest against the entirely unnecessary way he was being forced to operate. Foster said it was upon London’s insistence, but Snow didn’t believe him. He was sure London would be guided by what they were told, not try to impose unworkable difficulties from afar. So it was Foster’s doing, nobody else’s. So it was Foster’s fault if enquiries were made, after the protest.

Not unchristian, Snow repeated to himself, needing the reassurance. Simply common sense, that’s all. And he’d make his case sensibly and truthfully, not going behind the man’s back.